Plant Competition
INTRODUCTION

This experiment was used to show the different types of competition between species. Competition was defined as being a “relationship between members of the same or different species in which individuals are adversely affected by those having the same living requirements, such as food or space” (Competition 2010). There are two different types of competition that we will be observing during this experiment. The first type would be intraspecific, which means “competition between same species” (1976). The second type of competition is interspecific, which is defined as “competition between different species” (1976). These two types of competition have helped us look at the different types of interactions between plants species. The lab manual says that intraspecific competition experienced in plants is often very intensely prevalent, and the interspecific competition has the potential to be, mainly because they use most of the same resources (2015). For the experiment conducted for this report, intraspecific and interspecific competition was looked at using numerous set ups of radish and bean plants, and measured through the leaf length and biomass of each particular pot planted. The hypothesis that was fomred was that there would be intraspecific competition occurring between the radishes when planted in low density and high density, as well as intraspecific competition occurring between the beans planted in low density and high density, and in the pot containing both radish and bean seeds there would be interspecific and intraspecific competition occurring, causing a noticeable difference in leaf length and biomass. The null hypothesis generated from this lab would state that there would be no significant difference between leaf length and biomass due to interspecific or intraspecific in any of the five plants potted.

MATERIALS