The interacting influences of competition, composition, and diversity determine successional community change

Community change is one of the few constants in nature, and the balance of mechanisms influencing this change is central to understanding the structure and functioning of communities and ecosystems. Newly established communities undergo succession and can change in diversity and composition as local environmental change, interspecific interactions, and immigration play out over time. Understanding the influence of initial conditions and priority effects (long-term consequences of the initial community composition and species identity) on community change is critically important for both evaluating ecological theory and predicting restoration outcomes. 
Here I evaluate how initial experimental conditions in 2012, such as initial sown species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and early biomass production, along with priority effects caused by the identity of sown species, influence subsequent plant community composition and the number of colonizing species after nine years of uninterrupte...