Effects of experimental manipulation of light and nutrients on establishment of seedlings of native and invasive woody species in Long Island, NY, USA forests 2000 - 2003

While several studies on the process of invasion often focused on single factors or on
the general explanation of ‘disturbance,' recent work has attempted to move towards a more
mechanistic understanding of the factors that promote plant community invasion. Manipulative
experiments provide a means for discerning causal relationships and interactive effects of
environmental factors in promoting invasion. This dataset contains the results of
multifactor manipulative experiments in forest communities, which compared factors
influencing early seedling establishment for native and invasive woody plants. In an earlier
study, we found that in Long Island, NY, invasion patterns are correlated with forest
community type (pine barrens or hardwood), light availability, and soil N and Ca. Therefore,
we conducted manipulative field experiments in two different years to determine the relative
importance and interaction of experimental gaps and N and Ca addition in pine barrens and
hardwood forests in promoting invasion. We used seedlings of seven common native and
invasive species in the first experiment, and 16 native and invasive species paired
phylogenetically in the second experiment. This was done in the years 2000 and 2003
respectively.