Post Assignment #4 - Alia Latimer

There are several abiotic factors that contribute to our plants survival, and generally help it thrive. Many of these factors are aspects that make up the climate, such as the perception the plant receives as part of the water cycle. This can be received through natural means, such as rain or a river, but in our case it mostly comes through us watering our plants. Another would be the temperature, our plants being affected by how hot or cold the area is. 

One of the easiest ways I know that our plants are involved in competition is the fact that we have to weed the area fairly frequently. Before we started using the area there were lots of grass, and other volunteer plants, and even after we weeded the area, we still have to weed the area every couple days to keep other plants from sprouting in our little plot. So while our little plants may not have much competition because of our teams intervention, they still must compete to get the most water, space and sunlight.

In this sort of environment the winners and looses are determined by who gets to survive. Our plants are currently the winners, and the weeds that we have torn up are the looses. Of course it can be hard to know for sure who exactly wins, because often both organisms are injured or effected in some way. There also could be some unintended consequences, like the soil being diseased and that eventually killing all the plants that grow there, and spreading it to the others in that species.

While we can't see too much interaction, we have found evidence in the form of a worm. The worm would be These worms convert the organic material into the soil that the plant uses to grow up big and strong. There is also evidence of a predator prey relationship in the fact that we found a bite mark in one of the leaves. Obviously our little plants have been preyed on by some sort of insect, and there for has a relationship to the insect.

Since the soil still remains, there is definitely no primary secession, however there still is secondary secession at play. While there may have been no natural disaster, we did uproot the majority of the plant life that was living that area. We then brought in a new species that has been populating the area, along with some of the previous species that were inhabiting the area.