I'm a bio student and we have to do an ecology experiment that is due for December. I decided to do it with plants since they tend to remain still, but I don't have a clear idea for it. So, can anyone suggest angles, some general ideas, subjects (I live in the island of Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean)? We were thinking to do something along the lines of measuring plant recovery from certain poisons but I don't know any poisons, or how to measure this. I also thought of somehow seeing how, in a given environment, changing the dominance of plant species (i.e. augmenting some while reducing others) would affect the system, but, again, I don't know how to do this properly. BTW, this forum could prove a good find. While the experiment is a most pressing concern, I think I'll enjoy this (I like plants)
I've been interested in bioremediation. Stuff such as cleaning soils of toxic tailings with certain plants. With such a short time frame, that's probably too weighty a topic. Even in Puerto Rico you might find it hard to do a botany experiment in just this autumn. Someone on another unrelated forum was playing around with extending harvest times for certain fruits by sheltering a branch here and there with heavy shade. It was just playing around but he had interesting results that indicate his interventions did delay maturation of the fruits he chose. You could do something like this with seasonal flowering plants, such as poinsettia that are green now in the tropics. Everyone knows how you withhold light from them in the fall in order to trigger the display of red bracts. Perhaps you could do something with that. For instance, if you cut a large poinsettia so it sprouts new branches and leaves immediately, then forcefully shade a circular or triangular area on top of the plant while allowing more controlled light on the rest of the top of the plant, can you create a design of some interest or utility in bract displays?
