The dominance of non-native plants over native plants increases with the number of global change factors

Global environmental change and plant invasion are both recognized as key indicators of the Anthropocene, with the former potentially accelerating the latter. Still, whether multiple co-acting global change factors (GCFs) influence plant invasions even stronger remains untested despite the fact that in nature GCFs usually act together rather than alone. Here, four non-native and four native species were cultivated jointly as communities in mesocosm pots, and we tested their responses to increasing GCF numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). We found that GCF number had no influence on community productivity but increased the biomass proportion of non-native plants. GCF number increased biomass but had no influence on height for non-native plants, whereas both biomass and height of native plants decreased with increasing GCF number. Consequently, our findings indicate that dominance may increases when habitats experience multiple global change factors, and thus that invasion risk of non-native plants could potentially be underestimated from studies on single GCFs. Open Research statementThe data supporting the results will be made available upon acceptance.