The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effects of competition for resources on resulting plant biomass and to analyze the differences between intraspecific and interspecific competition. The study quantified the growth of two different plant species, wheat (Tricticum aestivum) and clover (Trifolium incarnatum), under four different conditions. In the two experiments for intraspecific competition, varying densities of wheat and clover where planted in monoculture. In the interspecific treatments, effect of wheat growth on clover was measured by planting a small amount of clover seeds with varying densities of wheat; the effect of clover growth on wheat was measured by planting a small amount of wheat seeds with varying densities of clover.
[...] In figure the effect of wheat on clover growth also showed a negative correlation between the density of wheat plants and the resulting clover per plant dry biomass (slope= - 7.82 The statistical analysis revealed that F1,18= R2= 0.13 ) (Table 1). This p value showed that the regression line was not statistically significant because there was less than a 95% chance that the relationship between the variables existed because wheat density affected clover per plant biomass (Table 1). The R2 value indicated that wheat density accounted for 13% of the variation in clover biomass (Table 1). [...]
[...] Interspecific Competition For interspecific competition, the growth of one species (indicator) was evaluated under the presence of varying densities of the other species (competitor). For this part of the experiment, eight more pots were filled with soil in the manner specified for the intraspecific competition experiment. Differently than in the previous method, however, first a small amount of clover was planted with varying densities of wheat and then a small amount of wheat was planted with varying densities of clover. [...]
[...] This p value showed that the regression line was statistically significant; there was much more than a 19/20 chance that the relationship between the variables existed because density affected per plant biomass (Table 1). The R2 value indicated that density accounted for 37% of the variation in clover biomass (Table 1). In figure the effect of clover on wheat growth showed a negative correlation between the density of clover plants and the resulting per plant dry biomass of wheat (slope= - 6.14 The statistical analysis revealed that F1,18= R2= 0.07 ) (Table 1). [...]
[...] Contrarily, clover density accounted for only and wheat density for only 13% of the per plant biomass of wheat and clover, respectively (Table 1). Moreover, only the p values for the intraspecific treatments where within the accepted range for significance of under 0.05 (Table 1). Integration of this information implied that density variation accounted for much more of the per plant biomass in the intraspecific treatments than in the interspecific experiments. In addition, the fact that the p value was more than 0.05 in the interspecific experiments demonstrated that the actual regression line was more apt to be a result of random events than from actual competition. [...]
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