Expanding on methodologies used by recent Biodiversity-Ecosystem Function studies, this community-assembly experiment tests whether functionally similar native and exotic plant species are equally capable of dominating late-successional plant assemblages.  Now in its fifth year, this experiment has revealed 1) significant individual and interactive effects of composition and diversity on function, 2) that intraspecific competition drives oscillations in diversity and function through time, 3) and that species differences relating to the draw-down of nitrogen and ground-level light (R*) can explain assembly outcomes.