Data from: Using plant functional distances to select species for restoration of mining sites

1. Plant facilitation, an ecological interaction that benefits at least
one species without harming the other, is increasingly used as a
restoration tool. To restore degraded habitats under a facilitation
framework, practitioners must correctly select both the benefactor (nurse)
and the beneficiary (facilitated) species. 2. Based on community assembly
and species coexistence theory, we propose selecting plant species that
largely differ in a suite of functional traits so that competition is
minimized and facilitation maximized due to functional complementarity. To
apply this guideline in a pilot restoration experiment performed in
metalliferous mine tailings in South-Eastern Spain, we first built the
plant-plant facilitative interaction network naturally occurring in a set
of 12 tailings. After characterizing each species with 20 morphological
and physiological traits, we verified that facilitative interactions were
predominantly established between functionally distant species. 3. Then,
we designed a sowing experiment combining 50 nurse-facilitated species
pairs separated by a wide range of functional distances. The success of
seedling establishment significantly increased with the functional
distance between the nurse and the facilitated plant species. 4. Synthesis
and applications. We encourage to use ecological facilitation together
with trait-based species selection to design restoration programmes based
on the principle of increasing functional distance between target species.
This method may not only promote the restoration of the plant cover but
also impact paramount ecosystem functions, thus being an efficient low
cost restoration practice in abiotically stressful ecosystems.