DOI: 10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp3c
title: The more microplastic types pollute the soil, the stronger the growth suppression of invasive alien and native plants

description: The ecological consequences of microplastic pollution for plants remain
 largely unknown, and the few studies that tested the effects usually
 focused on a single type of microplastic and a single plant species.
 However, most plants will be exposed to multiple microplastic types
 simultaneously, and the effects may vary among species. To test the
 effects of microplastic diversity on plants, we grew single plants of
 eight invasive and eight native species in pots with substrate polluted
 with 0, 1, 3 and 6 types of microplastics. We found that the growth
 suppression by microplastic pollution became stronger with the number of
 microplastic types the plants were exposed to. This tended to be
 particularly the case for invasive species, as their biomass advantage
 over natives diminished with the number of microplastic types. The biomass
 responses coincided with a positive effect of the number of microplastic
 types on root allocation and thickness, which was also stronger for
 invasive than for native species. In addition, the results of hierarchical
 diversity-interaction models suggest that the negative impact of
 microplastic diversity on the total biomass of invasive plant species was
 influenced by both the identities of the microplastic and certain types of
 microplastic with strong pairwise interactions. In contrast, the effect on
 native species was determined solely by the microplastic identities.
 Synthesis: Our multi-species study thus shows for the first time
 that the negative effects of microplastic pollution on plant growth
 increase with the number of microplastic types. We also found tentative
 evidence that the negative impacts of microplastic diversity were more
 pronounced for invasive plants compared to native plants, and that this
 might be due to differences in the responses of root allocation and
 thickness.
description: All data were collected from a greenhouse expeirment at the
 Northeast Institute of Geography and Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy
 of Sciences.
description: # The more microplastic types pollute the soil, the stronger the growth
 suppression of invasive alien and native plants
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp3c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp3c) ## Description of the data and file structure | Microplastic diversity | Main experiment | | :---------------------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | NrFu | Unique numbers | | Round 1 | Random numbers | | Round2 | Random numbers | | Species | Species name | | S\_phy | Species name | | Genus | Genus name | | Family | Family name | | MPscharacter | Microplastic diversity composition information | | MPsDiversity | Microplastic diversity levels | | Statues | Plant status | | MPSYW | Microplastic treatment | | MPs | Microplastic diversity levels | | MPs' | Microplastic diversity levels | | IniH(cm) | Initial plant height(cm) | | Final\_H(cm) | Harvest plant height(cm) | | abovebiomass(g) | Above-ground biomass(g) | | Rootscan(g) | Biomass of scanned portion of root(g) | | Totalroot(g) | Total root biomass(g) | | Totalbiomass(g) | Sum of above-ground and total root biomass(g) | | Rootlength(m) | Scanning of partial root lengths(m) | | Rdiameter(mm) | Average root diameter(mm) | | NA in the dataset | Plant death at experimental harvest | | The ordinal number of MPs character | corresponds to the ordinal number of Table S2 in the Supporting Information. | | **Microplastic\_effect\_sativa\_** | **Additional experiment** | | :--------------------------------- | :-------------------------------------------- | | Plastic1 | Microplastic names | | Total biomass(g) | Sum of above ground and total root biomass(g) |