Plant diversity and soil legacy independently affect the plant metabolome and induced responses following herbivory

Plant and soil biodiversity can have significant effects on herbivore resistance mediated by plant metabolites. Here, we disentangled the independent effects of plant diversity and soil legacy on constitutive and herbivore-induced plant metabolomes of three plant species in two complementary microcosm experiments.
First, we grew plants in sterile soil with three different plant diversity levels. Second, single plant species were grown on soil with different plant diversity-induced soil legacies. We infested a subset of all plants with Spodoptera exigua larvae, a generalist leaf-chewing herbivore, and assessed foliar and root metabolomes. 
Neither plant diversity nor soil legacy had significant effects on overall foliar, root, or herbivore-induced metabolome composition. Herbivore-induced metabolomes, however, differed from those of control plants. We detected 139 significantly regulated metabolites by comparing plants grown in monocultures with conspecifics growing in plant or soil lega..., , , # Plant diversity and soil legacy independently affect the plant metabolome and induced responses following herbivory.

The data presented here covers plant individual and tissue-specific metabolite data as well as plant individual and tissue-specific biomass.
For detailed information how the data was acquired, please see the associated manuscript in Ecology and Evolution.

## Description of the Data and file structure

General information: n/a denotes not available information, e.g., a metabolite that was not detected in a particular sample, or an empty cell in a remarks column for there were no remarks to be made during measurement

Dataset: Constitutive Metabolome\_Meta-Data\_PPI.csv
Column name Description
Composition Realized plant species community; Ger - Geranium pratense; Leu - Leucanthemum vulgare; Ran - Ranunculus acris
Sample.species Plant species name
Tissue Sampled plant tissue
Pot\_Nr Running microcosm number
Diversity Plant species richness of the micro...