Data from: Biomass responses of widely and less-widely naturalized alien plants to artificial light at night

Artificial light at night has rapidly increased during the last century,
and could potentially affect many ecological processes, from individuals
via communities to entire ecosystems. Recent research has shown that
artificial light at night may not only affect the behavior of animals but
also growth of plants and vegetation composition. However, it is not known
yet whether artificial light at night may also affect other global change
components such as plant invasions.   Here, we tested how
naturalized alien plants respond to artificial light at night, and
particularly whether widely naturalized species differ from less-widely
naturalized species in their response to artificial light at night. We
grew nine taxonomically related pairs of widely naturalized and
less-widely naturalized species alone and in competition, with native
plants with and without artificial light at night. We found that in the
competition treatment, artificial light at night significantly increased
the total biomass production per pot, but not the biomass ratio between
the naturalized alien plants and the native competitors. Interestingly,
although the less-widely naturalized species produced overall
significantly less biomass than the widely naturalized species, there was
a trend that the less-widely naturalized species increased their biomass
more strongly in response to artificial light at night than the widely
naturalized species did (P = 0.07). Synthesis. Our study shows that
although widely naturalized plants produce more biomass than less-widely
naturalized plants across different environmental conditions, they took
less advantage of artificial light at night. This suggests that artificial
light at night might lead to increased spread of currently less-widely
naturalized species, at least when artificial light at night continues to
increase.