Data from: Strong natural selection during plant restoration favors an unexpected suite of plant traits

Restoration is an opportunity to study natural selection: one can measure
the distribution of traits in source propagules used to found populations,
compare this with the distribution of traits in successful recruits, and
determine the strength and direction of selection on potentially adaptive
traits. We asked if natural selection influenced seedling establishment
during post-fire restoration in the Great Basin, an area where large-scale
restoration occurs with a few widely available cultivars planted over a
large range of environmental conditions. We collected seeds from
established plants of the perennial grass Elymus elymoides ssp.
californicus (squirreltail) at two restoration sites, and compared the
distribution of phenotypic traits of surviving plants with the original
pool of restoration seeds. Seeds were planted in common gardens for two
generations. Plants grown from seeds that established in the field were a
non-random subset of the original seeds, with directional selection
consistently favoring a correlated suite of traits in both field sites:
small plant and seed size, and earlier flowering phenology. These results
demonstrate that natural selection can affect restoration establishment in
strong and predictable ways, and that adaptive traits in these sites were
opposite of the current criteria used for selection of restoration
material in this system.