Data from: 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 uninterrupted
natural colonization.   I found that sown phylogenetic diversity
(measured as mean pairwise distance) indirectly affected the number of
colonizing species by increasing biomass production early on and plots
with more biomass in 2012 were colonized by fewer species. Individual
species influenced the number of colonizing species with taller species
reducing the number of colonists and some shorter species increasing the
number of colonists.  Synthesis: Taken together, these results
indicate that initial composition influences the number of colonizing
species via community-wide competition. These findings suggest that
restoration outcomes can be greatly influenced by decisions about sown
species composition and early management practices.