Grass Species Garden Competition Experiment in the Chihuahuan Desert Grassland at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico

We established long-term monocultures and species interaction plots of common grasses, for measuring species traits in a common garden, and testing which traits correlate with competitive ability against two dominant species (blue and black gramma) and abundance in polyculture. The plots are 2 x 2.5 meters to allow the 0.5 meter strip on one side of the plot to be used in invasion future experiments. The purpose of this study is: 1) to measure traits of seven species in a replicated common garden 2) to correlate species traits with the outcome of competition among two species 3) to correlate species traits with the relative abundances of species in polyculture (i.e. all seven species).