Blog Post 4

  Some of the abiotic factors in which the plant depends on is water. Water in the key source of life, without water there is not life, plants take in water to the roots or leaves and feed of this. Sunlight is also another abiotic factor that plants depend on, sunlight allows photosynthesis to occur with the plant, plants grow from the sunlight. One other nonliving factor that plants depend on is the soil, obviously without soil plants cannot grow, it is the home of plants. The biotic factors that plants depend on include worms, although these creatures are often seen as useless they are the ones that provide soil for the plants to live in, they create the homes for the plants naturally. The worms dampen the soil and make it better suitable for plants to live in.

   You tell that the plants are engaged with competition with each other, they can compete for space and water, and sometimes sunlight if another plant is covering its source of light. I can tell because some plants are larger and growing at a more rapid rate than others.

  I see two obvious observations that tell you which plant is winning in competition, by its size, and how green it is. The winner is larger and greener while the looser is smaller because photosynthesis has not occurred as rapid because of the lack of sunlight or water, the looser will also be not as green and more of a yellow complexion or dark green depending on the plant. It can be difficult to determine who has won or lost the competition because of the slight difference in color, size, and amount of soil. One way you can determine it is using measuring instruments that can calculate size or even color.

 An other form of interaction is parasitism this can be observed when the plants of holes throughout their leaves, this is due because of the caterpillars feeding on the plants for food. One other interaction is mutualism between both the plant and worms, the worms create a better environment with the soil and the plant creates a home or shade for the worm.

 There is more of a secondary succession occurring because the plants are growing rapidly, the environment has gone from only soil to completely full of plant life.