Alien plant fitness is limited by functional trade-offs rather than a long-term increase in competitive effects of native communities

Alien plants experience novel abiotic conditions and interactions with native communities in the introduced area. Intra- and interspecific selection on functional traits in the new environment may lead to increased population growth with time since introduction (residence time). However, selection regimes might differ depending on the invaded habitat. Additionally, in high-competition habitats, a build-up of biotic resistance of native species due to accumulation of eco-evolutionary experience to aliens over time may limit invasion success. We tested if the effect of functional traits and the population dynamics of aliens depends on interspecific competition with native plant communities. We conducted a multi-species experiment with 40 annual Asteraceae that differ in residence time in Germany. We followed their population growth in monocultures and in interspecific competition with an experienced native community (varying co-existence times between focals and community). To more robust..., , Applications used: R-software for statistical computing., README of “Data from: Alien plant fitness is limited by functional trade-offs rather than a long-term increase in competitive effects of native communities”

**General description of the data files:**

General information: The data file “Brendel\_Schurr\_Sheppard\_2023\_lambda0.e0.f0.lambda1.csv” contains data which was collected from a common garden experiment at a field station of the University of Hohenheim (48°42’45.2”N, 9°11’23.6”E) in Stuttgart, Germany, during the growing seasons 2016 and 2017. The data file “Brendel\_Schurr\_Sheppard\_2023\_AsteraceaePhylogeny” contains the phylogenetic information of the Asteraceae study species extracted from the Daphne Phylogeny (Durka & Michalski 2012, Ecology 93).

One line represents: One experimental mesocosm for the data file “Brendel\_Schurr\_Sheppard\_2023\_lambda0.e0.f0.lambda1.csv”.
NA-values in the dataset refer to mesocosms, species, or populations, for which no data is available.

**Variables:** “Brendel\_Schurr\_Sheppard\_2...