Ecology experiment

[Fizzle]

I'm a bio student at the University of PR and we have to do an ecology experiment that is due for December. I decided to do it with plants since they tend to remain still, but I don't have a clear idea for it. So, can anyone suggest angles, some general ideas, subjects (I live in the island of Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean)? We were thinking to do something along the lines of measuring plant recovery from certain poisons but I don't know any poisons, or how to measure this. I also thought of somehow seeing how, in a given environment, changing the dominance of plant species (i.e. augmenting some while reducing others) would affect the system, but, again, I don't know how to do this properly.

 

IOW, I'm kinda stumped

[alex folen]

Not sure how fast any plants grow in PR but you may be limited on time to see, or thwart any poisson interactions with growth. If plants should grow super fast then time lapse pictures would be helpful, now till then. Small concentrations of "Round up" in varying concentrations perhaps? We know what this is.

[Fizzle]

Oh, btw, they don't have to be plants. I just chose them because they tend to stay still .

Edited September 27, 2009 by Fizzle

[Mokele]

That's the same reason everyone else chooses plants. I'd google around about 'tropical ecology'). A lot of ecological research has been on temperate ecosystems simply due to proximity, and I've heard there are some pretty well-recognized gaps in our understanding of how the tropics work and are different.

 

One possible non-plant system that I'm fond of is Anolis lizards. Look up Irschick & Losos work on them - it's a fascinating read, and you've got loads of them all over the island. You could potentially do much more detailed studies because you live there and thus can watch for longer.