Ecosystem restoration efforts are carried out by a variety of individuals and organizations with an equally varied set of goals, priorities, resources and time-scales. Once restoration of a degraded landscape or community is recognized as necessary, choosing which species to include in a restoration programme can be a difficult and value-laden process (Fry, Power & Manning 2013; Jones 2013). Species choice in restoration is often carried out with limited ecological information, particularly in regard to species interactions, successional processes and resource-use patterns. Selecting species can be particularly problematic in systems where there is no available baseline data on historical communities, or when restoration to a historic state is not feasible for ecological, logistic or economic reasons. In such cases, it may be preferable to focus on restoring site ‘functionality’ rather than returning to a historic baseline composition. We present a method for species selection in restoration, based on the collection of plant functional trait data. Using this method, managers can develop species mixtures with desired properties, including expected predictions of interspecific interactions and potential changes in biotic and abiotic conditions.
