Journal Number 4: Marsh Park

Professor Di Fiori brought to the class’ attention that the community is revitalizing Marsh Park into what it once was. In other words, the community is restoring to its health similar to JPL. Our team diagnosed Marsh Park as the least healthy sites by its low biodiversity and high chemical levels. However, even though it is the unhealthiest site, it was showing improvements in its health. Even though, non-native brings generally negative effects, there are some exceptions that made the ecosystem respond positively in some way. According to a scholarly article “Ecological Consequences of Biological Invasion”, the non-native plants can change the entire ecosystem of a site. In this case, Lower Arroyo had the highest variety of plants and that brings a different animal species. This is because there are different varieties of food source to eat for the animals, and thus creates a positive impact on the food web. This gives an explanation of Lower Arroyo highest biodiversity because of the increased trophic levels. However, it is important to remember that some of the non-native plants are invasive. In this site, non-native plant was recorded to have the highest diversity at same time native plants have the lowest diversity. This gives the idea that some of these non-native plants are extremely invasive if there were little recorded native plants. This might also be because there was apparent competition in the ecosystem. According to a study in an article “Apparent competition with an invasive plant hastens the extinction of an endangered lupin” shows that a native rodent Peromyscus maniculatus increased in their consumption of the native coastal dune plant Lupinus tidestomii due to the the proximity of the invasive grass Ammophilia arenia. In other words, invasive plants may compete against native plants by creating apparent competition that increases the pressure of native consumers. The results showed that the non-native plants have invaded the area and decreased the population of native consumers creates elevated levels of native plant consumptions. In other words, the native consumers have more pressure to eat native plants because there is low abundance of it. Hence, this can cause premature extinction of native plant species. This relates to our findings because Marsh Park, as mentioned before, was recorded to have the lowest native plant diversity with high nonnative plant diversity. It is true that the food level increases, but the overall health and ecosystem decreased because of the low diversity of native plants. However, it is tremendous that the community is restoring the health of Marsh Park.

References:
Dangremond, Emily M., et al. “Apparent Competition with an Invasive Plant Hastens the
Extinction of an Endangered Lupine.” Ecology, vol. 91, no. 8, 2010, pp. 2261–2271. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27860791.

Ehrenfeld, Joan G. “Ecosystem Consequences of Biological Invasions.” Annual Review of
Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, vol. 41, 2010, pp. 59–80. JSTOR, JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/27896214.

Publicado el 10 de diciembre de 2017 a las 10:15 PM por lili11