Establishment and management of native functional groups in restoration

The limiting similarity hypothesis predicts that communities should be more resistant to invasion by non-natives when they include natives with a diversity of traits from more than one functional group. In restoration, planting natives with a diversity of traits may result in competition between natives of different functional groups and may influence the efficacy of different seeding and maintenance methods, potentially impacting native establishment. We compare initial establishment and first-year performance of natives and the effectiveness of maintenance techniques in uniform versus mixed functional group plantings. We seeded ruderal herbaceous natives, longer-lived shrubby natives, or a mixture of the two functional groups using drill and hand-seeding methods. Non-natives were left undisturbed, removed by hand-weeding and mowing, or treated with herbicide to test maintenance methods in a factorial design. Native functional groups had the highest establishment, growth, and reproduct...