SYNTHESIS OBSERVATION

All in all, the conservation status for the plants that I observed either have no conservation status or they are not in danger, only applicable to the United States. As I mentioned before, nonnative plants are more competitive than native plants. This is probably due to how the plants must learn to adapt to its new environment compared to a plant that was meant to be there. As a result, nonnative plants show that they are healthy, which in class we defined health as vigor, resilience, and organization. With vigor, my group and I explained that it is a plant’s productivity. In this case, nonnative plants are able to undertake the stress the environment may have on it as they try to adapt. In relations, organization is deduced on whether or not the nonnative plants was able to adapt and thrive after the stress. Resilience is based on how the nonnative plants adapted despite all the stress it has been introduced to. As for order and entropy, it is demonstrated on whether there was high entropy or low entropy when the stress factors were applied.

What are the benefits of planting native plants? For instance, native plants are low maintenance since they are accustomed to the environment (ex. Require less water), can combat against climate change (ex. Oaks are effective at storing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide), and research shows that native wildlife prefer native plants.

From this, which plant is able to survive with the other around? According to Are Invasive Plant Species Better Competitors than Native Plant Species, it has been stated that invasive plants appear to be more competitive than native plants; however, the hypothesis is still being tested. How do these nonnative plants end up in a new location anyways? Throughout your lifetime, at one point or another, you've probably encountered a nonnative plant even if you did not know. According to Invasive Plant Species of the World, 2nd Edition: A Reference Guide to Environmental Weeds, these species are here due to the increasing trade volume around the planet, continuing habitat destruction and pollution.

As the nonnative species increase, does it affect native plants? According to Invasive Plant Suppresses the Growth of Native Tree Seedlings Disrupting Belowground Mutualisms, there are a few studies that show how nonnative plants alter the delicate ecological interactions among the native species in the area. For example, there is a novel evidence that used a nonnative plant called Alliaria petiolata near the North American forests. As a result, it suppressed the native plants growth by disrupting mutualistic associations between native canopy tree seedlings and belowground arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Nonnative plants grow taller and have higher reproductive capacity where they have invaded compared to the native plants (Willis, 2000).

Also, it is common to see weeds everywhere. For example, you see yellow flowers are your lawn that randomly pop up -- those are weeds. Similarly, I observed weeds at Marsh Park, specifically Mustards. How do these weeds appear in the first place? According to Weeds and Domesticates: Evolution in the man-made habitat, weeds form in three ways: from colonizers through selection towards adaptation to continuous habitat disturbance; as derivatives of hybridization between wild and cultivated races of domestic species; and through selection towards re-establishing natural seed dispersal mechanisms in abandoned domesticates. In other words, they evolved from wild food plants which were brought into cultivation, but how did this happen? This happened from a man who started to reproduce plants in successive generation by means of seed or vegetative propagules.

Reference:
https://jonlefcheck.net/2012/10/23/diversity-as-effective-numbers/
http://www.cnps.org/cnps/grownative/benefits.php
Vilà, Montserrat, and Jacob Weiner. “Are Invasive Plant Species Better Competitors than Native Plant Species? – Evidence from Pair‐Wise Experiments.” Oikos, Munksgaard, 22 Mar. 2004, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0030-1299.2004.12682.x/full.
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ns_UDgAAQBAJ&lpg=PR3&ots=vEf3NJYuuL&dq=invasive%20plant%20species&lr&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=invasive%20plant%20species&f=false
Willis, A.J., et al. “Is There Evidence for the Post‐Invasion Evolution of Increased Size among Invasive Plant Species?” Ecology Letters, Blackwell Science Ltd, 5 Apr. 2002, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1461-0248.2000.00149.x/full.
Stinson, Kristina A, et al. “Invasive Plant Suppresses the Growth of Native Tree Seedlings by Disrupting Belowground Mutualisms.” PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0040140.
Wet, J. M. J. De, and J. R. Harlan. “Weeds and Domesticates: Evolution in the Man-Made Habitat.” SpringerLink, Springer-Verlag, 21 June 1974, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02863309.

Posted on December 10, 2017 07:38 PM by erinxhang