The theoretical basis of my experiment is the competitive establishment of two invasive aggressive weeds after human disturbance of bare land within a gravel pit.
My hypothesis is that the two different species are opportunistic colonizers of newly available space. As such, both species use methods of increasing their population that encourages offspring plants in close proximity, such as short-range seed dispersal. My second hypothesis was that the two plant species compete with each other for space. This hypothesis came from my observation that each of the two species appear to grow in individual groups rather than being distributed equally throughout the study location.
My second hypothesis is already faltering, after feedback from our tutor about there needing to be a proven connection between the two species to be able to evaluate their competition with any certainty, and also through spending the time identifying the plant species and reading about their ecological traits. However, the purpose of this course is to set out to prove or disprove a hypothesis, not to change the hypothesis half-way through it after collecting the data, so I will continue to use this idea of competition between the two species as my research question.
Therefore, the ideas underpinning my research would be competition (such as those from chapter 9.2), succession (e.g., chapter 10.3), and plant physiology (e.g., tolerance of/preference for certain environmental factors). Three keywords that describe my research project are plant succession, invasive species, and weeds.