Leaf area index and community height in subplots with Solidago phytometers (2011 and 2012)

Two common hypotheses in invasion biology are the “inherent superiority hypothesis” stating that particular traits of non-native species cause their higher performance compared to native species, and the “biotic resistance hypothesis” stating that at local scale invasibility decreases with resident species richness. To test if plant community diversity reduces the performance of invasive non-native species more strongly than that of native ones, I planted individuals of three Solidago species, S. virgaurea (native), S. canadensis (non-native, frequent in the local flora) and S. gigantea (non-native, non-frequent in the local flora), into all plots of the main Jena Experiment in spring 2011 and monitored the transplants over two growing seasons. This data contains functional traits and measures of performance recorded on all Solidago transplants in 2011 and 2012.