During my second visit to the site, I focused on the first question from Post #1 by observing how mountain rose distribution varies with elevation.
I went to Desierto de Los Leones National Park on August 8th to do a hike with some ascent (675 m) to capture different locations along the elevation gradient. It was a 12 km in-and-out hike and began at 3,010 m.a.s.l. I arrived at the location at 10:36 AM and left at 2:19 PM (CT). It was sunny with some cloud coverage on arrival and a max temperature of 25 °C. Throughout the hike, clouds started gathering, and 30 min before leaving, it began raining, and temperatures dropped to 17 °C. The average temperature was 22 °C, and environmental pollution was very high.
The organism of study is Eryngium monocephalum, commonly known as mountain rose, and is native to Mexico. There were no mountain roses for the first part of the hike; however, I found the first one at around 3,405 m.a.s.l. (Image 1) and could not find any other around. I recorded the location’s coordinates and altitude using a smartwatch. Reaching the peak of Cerro del Caballete, I looked for another specimen and counted the number of roses in a 5×5 m square around it. On the way down, I did the same after a 5 and 10 min walk. The roses were found in a rocky area with tall grasses and a few small trees (Image 2).
The summary of the four locations I surveyed can be found in the table below (Table 1) and the their corresponding locations are shown as flags along the route in Image 3. These measurements are biased and will not be used for the actual project, but they show a possible pattern in the distribution of mountain roses.
Table 1. Number of mountain roses found at each of the four locations surveyed
|
Location |
Altitude |
No. of Roses |
|
1 |
3,405 m |
1 |
|
2 |
3,666 m |
17 |
|
3 |
3,653 m |
28 |
|
4 |
3,619 m |
2 |
There appears to be a relationship between the abundance of mountain roses and altitude. However, the reason could be due to many things that vary with elevation. I believe the underlying process is that the organism requires a high amount of sunshine; thus, it will only grow on the top of mountains with few to no tree coverage. My prediction is that mountain roses will grow better at higher altitudes since it is mountainous terrain, and lower areas are in the shadow of the surrounding mountains. In addition, there might be a lower number of individuals on the north side of the mountain.
Hypothesis: Mountain roses require a large amount of incident light to grow.
Prediction: The abundance of mountain roses increases with altitude due to the mountainous nature of the terrain.
Response Variable: The number of mountain roses per unit area. It is a continuous variable.
Predictor Variable: Altitude and is a continuous variable. Therefore the experiment will be a regression.
