Data from: Invasive alien plants benefit more from clonal integration in heterogeneous environments than natives

What confers invasive alien plants a competitive advantage over native
plants remains open to debate. Many of the world's worst invasive
alien plants are clonal and able to share resources within clones (clonal
integration), particularly in heterogeneous environments. Here, we tested
the hypothesis that clonal integration benefits invasive clonal plants
more than natives and thus confers invasives a competitive advantage. We
selected five congeneric and naturally co-occurring pairs of invasive
alien and native clonal plants in China, and grew pairs of connected and
disconnected ramets under heterogeneous light, soil nutrient and water
conditions that are commonly encountered by alien plants during their
invasion into new areas. Clonal integration increased biomass of all
plants in all three heterogeneous resource environments. However, invasive
plants benefited more from clonal integration than natives. Consequently,
invasive plants produced more biomass than natives. Our results indicate
that clonal integration may confer invasive alien clonal plants a
competitive advantage over natives. Therefore, differences in the ability
of clonal integration could potentially explain, at least partly, the
invasion success of alien clonal plants in areas where resources are
heterogeneously distributed.