The initial data collection at my site was very interesting. Just after I finished my first replicate, I noticed that I had 3 esteemed visitors that were doing exactly what I was trying to determine in my study. More specifically, I had 3 deer that were munching their way across my site on a variety of vegetation. I had to put my actual study on hold, and I ended up watching and photographing the deer’s herbivory habits for about 30-45 minutes while they worked their way across my site from the southern edge to the northern side.
My first replicate did not show any signs of deer herbivory, so I was surprised when I saw the deer slowly grazing on the grasses and young leaves on shrubs that had just appeared over the last few days. I was watching to see if the deer were eating or avoiding anything and what I saw was quite interesting. The deer spent a lot of time slowly eating the grasses that are slowly growing up. I watched a deer go up to a daffodil shoot and smell it then turn away to eat what was next to it without touching any of the daffodil foliage.
I thought that the deer would specifically go to the camas clumps since the evidence onsite shows that the camas lily is heavily impacted by herbivory. I did not see them seek out camas but what was surprising though was that when the deer got to a clump of camas, their behaviour changed as they did not keep slowly making their way northwards but stopped to fully graze all of the camas clump that was above a certain level. It seemed like they really liked the camas and wanted to eat it all up as quickly as possible. Once the camas clump was eaten down then the deer continued to slowly graze on the grasses moving north. They did not seek out another camas clump after though which is what I thought they would do. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t eat it down to the roots and only ate the top half of the shoots.
After the deer left, I examined what remained of the camas shoots. I was surprised that there was chickweed growing entangled in the camas shoots and the deer ate down to the level that the chickweed grew. There was no evidence of herbivory on the chickweed, so I think that the grazing stopped once the chickweed was touched making me believe that the deer do not like chickweed. Since my replicate study was halted by the deer invasion, I went back the next day to complete my replicates.
So back to the replicates and the actual study. I had chosen 5 sites randomly by applying a grid system to my map which is in a 1cm-1m ratio for map to real world. I used excel to randomly generate x/y coordinates and then sampled these spots. I used a 1 m2 quadrat and took data about which plants were in the quadrat and if they showed signs of herbivory or not.
My initial data showed that in these spots, very little herbivory was occurring. I will note that in all 5 replicates there was no camas, which was a bit of an issue because that was the most important object of study in my mind. What I found was that there were a few signs of herbivory on some grasses and miner’s lettuce. There were no signs of herbivory on chickweed, red deadnettle, or the dovefoot geranium. The grasses overall were untouched in 3 out of 5 of the plots.
So it was a problem that I did not have any camas in any of the 5 replicate plots that I had. If I continue to use my current hypothesis, I would have to alter the study to a randomized block study where homogeneous blocks are chosen to sample randomly within. For example, the rocky outcrop does not have enough soil on it for most species other than grass and moss. I suppose I could also just increase the number of replicates from 10 to 20 and then I would have a better likelihood of having camas representative in my sampling. I may have to alter my hypothesis though to better incorporate what is happening at this site.
Current hypothesis: Selective herbivory of camas lily is occurring in the native plant garden at Camosun college.
Possible new hypothesis: Selective herbivory of different species is occurring in the native plant garden at Camosun college.
Another thing that I was surprised to find was that most of the species that were in my quadrats were introduced species. The only local species were the mosses, miner’s lettuce, and blackberry if this was indeed the trailing blackberry variant. For this being called a native plant garden there was relatively little groundcover that was actually “native”. I know that all of the grasses are introduced species as my plant’s class teacher spent his earlier career studying grasses and has told us that there is not a single native grass species at my study site.