THE EFFECTS OF INTRASPECIFIC AND INTERSPECIFIC

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Pea shoot length was varied, and the control had a huge confidence interval of about 5.8 to 41.6 cm because one of the six control peas had a stalk length of 5.5 cm. This may have thrown off some of the statistics along with the low number of data points, for if this low value was not included in the calculation of the mean, the mean would be 27.3 cm instead of 23.6 cm. In general, root length is greater when the plants are growing in low densities even if the plant species are mixed, and shoot/stalk length is not affected very much by competition. The number of leaves on the wheat plants was always two, except for a few individual plants in intraspecific competition that had only one leaf. For the peas, number of leaves varied directly with the height of the stalk. Taller plants had more leaves, and tendrils followed this model as well. In one instance of interspecific competition between three wheat and two peas, one of the pea tendrils was knotted around the tip of a wheat leaf, but it did not seem to be harming the wheat plant in any way. Although many peas did not germinate, general trends were visible in the experiment results. Discussion Through looking at the data, certain conclusions are reached. The previous null hypothesis that there is no significant difference between the average individual wheat plant grown alone, grown in greater density and grown with a different species plant must be rejected. There are several differences between the wheat control and wheat grown with other wheat at high densities. First, the root lengths of the wheat control are higher than the wheat grown at a greater density. Shoot length may be very similar, but the roots are the major resource obtaining structures in plants. Most of the competition must 8
e for the water and nutrients in the soil because the leaves are responsible for taking in sunlight, and most of the wheat seedlings had two leaves that were about the same size. Wheat grown with peas also yielded the same difference. Roots were longer in wheat grown at lower densities of two plants per pot, be they two wheat plants or one wheat plant and one pea plant. As soon as the number of plants per pot was increased to 5 or 7, the root length decreased. Clearly, wheat grows better in lower densities, but it can easily be grown with another species. For farmers looking to grow wheat, an optimum density is two wheat seedlings per starting pot, and wheat can be grown with peas, for the root length stayed constant. The null hypothesis that there is no significant difference between the root length and stalk length of peas grown alone in low density and peas grown with wheat cannot fully be rejected or accepted because there is not adequate data to analyze. There are only six data points for the control, two for the one pea/one wheat, none for two pea/two wheat (only the wheat grew), four for three pea/three wheat (which turned out to be two pea/three wheat), one for four pea/four wheat (which turned out to be one pea, three wheat, so it was not included in the analysis), and two for the five pea/five wheat (which turned out to be two pea/five wheat). With data sets of only two points, the conclusions reached are probably exaggerated or non-existent. There was a difference in the root length of the pea controls and interspecific competing peas. Root length decreased with increased density, but actually increased when one pea plant was grown with one wheat plant. It actually may be beneficial to farmers to grow wheat and Alaskan peas together, for the wheat’s root length was not affected, and the pea’s root length increased. Growing two plants in one area will maximize yield and the two plants that have slightly 9
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THE EFFECTS OF INTRASPECIFIC AND INTERSPECIFIC

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