Blogpost #4: An Ecological Analysis of the Garden and our Plants - Sydney Stitt

Our plant has grown a tremendous amount over the past few weeks. This constant growth is dependent on many abiotic and biotic factors, such as sunlight, precipitation, and carbon dioxide. Sunlight, precipitation and carbon dioxide are important elements to the photosynthesis process. Since all plants are autotrophs, plants will completely depend on photosynthesis to create their own nutrient, thus, to survive.

Some biotic factors that affect our plant are animals, bacteria, decomposers, and other organisms. Plants mainly recieve nitrogen through bacteria in the soil, as they cannot absorb it through the air. Decomposers break down some of the dead/dying plants molecular level. Organisms (specifically herbiviores, as they are the ones to eat the plants) will feast upon the plants. Other animals also can trample on the plants, breaking the structure and stopping it from growing properly.

Almost every single organism engages in competition. This also includes our own plant. Due to the limited surface area the plants are given to grow and the many plants that currently inhabit the same area, sunlight and water as well as other simple abiotic factors can be limited. While this may be affected due to growth rates, we can tell our little cabbage plant engages in growth competition from the way other plants in the same area grow more and/or bigger. Other brassica oleracea plants that compete with our plant are broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale,

Winners and losers are determined depending on the population of predation, and parisitism, showing how populations drop and increase, an organism can eat another and change their population, and parisitism shows how one of the organism benefit, and the other suffers, the sufferer becoming the loser. It isn't always clear who wins and loses because it depends how similar two organisms are. If they are both competitors, they could both eat each other and have an equal chance, it can be very difficult to decide who has won and who has lost.



Unfortunately for our little plant, it seems that some organisms have taken a bit of a nibble at it. Obvious bite holes have been exposed on our cabbage plant (we all suspect the chickens...those crazy chickens). Herbivorous predation could also be considered as parasitism, as our plant is not killed but harmed. While the suspected chickens (or whoever may be eating our cabbage) get a nice meal, our cabbage has to grow back what it lost.



As our plant grows more and more, we can suspect there's some sort of secondary succession happening. While we did start from scratch, our plant still has the fundaments such as soil to begin with, rather than having to start with plain rock.