Journal Number 2: Lower Arroyo

Lower Arroyo was recorded to have the highest diversity, so the group mistakenly thought that it was the healthiest site. However, it was brought up to our attention that it has several non-native sand exotic species. Lower Arroyo gave a relatively amount of native species along with non-native species. In a scholarly article “Exotic plants contribute positively to biodiversity functions but reduce native seed production and arthropod richness”, there are some cases that non-native plants increase the biodiversity and arthropod richness. However, as mentioned in the title, the seed production decreases. It was noticed that Lower Arroyo has the highest biodiversity of insects, and it has several exotic plants including eucalyptus. Even though native plants attract most of the insect/arthropods population, the non-native plants brought a few non-native insects as well give more variety in the insect’s food source. However, it was also noted in the article that when native and non-native plants are raised together in an ecosystem, the non-native plants suppress seed production of native plants. This makes sense because of their higher abundance of non-native plants along with the reduction of the native plants on the site. Lower Arroyo displayed relatively warm temperatures and is connected to a vast amount of water. Another way to explain the relative abundance of non-native plants is their ability to use up more water because of their tendency to have higher sapping rate. According to the article “Comparative water use of native and invasive plants at multiple scales: a global meta-analysis”, the study demonstrates that the invasive plants have a tendency to have higher evapotranspiration rate and greater stomata conductance than the native plants. It was also noted in the article that plants enhance their water use in presence of hotter temperatures. This study provides an explanation of higher non-native plants percentage in comparison to other sites. Lower Arroyo was the ranked the second healthiest site in comparison to others.

References:
Cavaleri, Molly A., and Lawren Sack. “Comparative Water Use of Native and Invasive
Plants at Multiple Scales: a Global Meta-Analysis.” Ecology, vol. 91, no. 9, 2010, pp. 2705–2715. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27860847.

Cook-Patton, Susan C., and Anurag A. Agrawal. “Exotic Plants Contribute Positively to
Biodiversity Functions but Reduce Native Seed Production and Arthropod Richness.” Ecology, vol. 95, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1642–1650. JSTOR, JSTOR,

Publicado el 10 de diciembre de 2017 a las 10:11 PM por lili11