Data from: Successful recovery of native plants post-invasive removal in forest understories is driven by native community features

Temperate forest understories hold the majority of the plant diversity
present in these ecosystems and play an essential role in the recruitment
and establishment of native trees. However, the long-term persistence of
healthy forest understories is threatened by the impacts of invasive
plants. As a result, a common practice is the removal of the agent of
invasion. Despite this, we know little about the success of these
practices and lack a comprehensive understanding of what intrinsic and
extrinsic factors shape the recovery. In a multi-year field experiment, we
investigated (Q1) whether native propagule availability drove native
community recovery, (Q2) what the characteristics of successfully
recovering communities were, and (Q3) under which environmental conditions
recovery rates were faster. After initial removal of invasives, we seeded
native species to manipulate assembly history and mimic restoration
practices, we also implemented a repeated, vs. once, removal treatment,
all in a full-factorial design. We collected data on plant species
composition and abundance (i.e., species level percent cover) and on
environmental conditions (i.e., light and soil water availability) in the
three subsequent summers. Our results show that native community recovery
rates were independent of seeding additions or frequency of invasive plant
removal. The fastest rates of recovery were associated with high native
species richness, native communities with higher values of specific leaf
area (SLA), and low drought stress years. Our results suggest that
restoration practices post-invasive plant removal should be tailored to
enhance natural dispersal, or artificial addition if the resident
community is species-poor, of native species with traits compatible with
high resource availability, such as species with high SLA. In addition to
the importance of the native community characteristics, our results
underscore the need for assessing environmental conditions, favoring
management practices during years of low drought stress to maximize native
community recovery.