February 28, 2011
Effects of Decaying Plants on Biodiversity
Dillon Gilbow ‘13 is a sophmore from Blytheville, Arkansas, studying biology and chemistry. Click on arrows below to lea...
Dillon Gilbow, Lauren Leeber, Ashley Reich and Daniel Sanchez
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Beyond Papers
Abstract
In ecology biodiversity yields a great deal of information about a biosystem. Biodiversity provides insight into many topics in ecology that affect the world, such as how invasive species and humans have effected or disturbed the biosystems. The Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH) was developed to explain some of the effects of these disturbances. The IDH states that the maximum of biodiversity will occur at intermediate levels of disturbance. Our experiment focused on examining the effects of the number of dead plants had on plant diversity in low meadow prairie and forest biomes at the Hafner Meadows in Lake Forest, Illinois during mid-September. We hypothesized that the maximum of biodiversity will occur where there are intermediate levels of dead plants. The results showed that biodiversity did reach its peak at intermediate levels of dead plants, which is consistent with the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis.
