The Affects of Competition for Resources and Sunlight Exposure on Plantago major (Common Plantain) Size At York University's Danby Grassland

The dataset was collected on two separate days, it was collected on Monday October 19th, 2015. and Monday October 26th, 2015. The sampling took place at Danby grassland at York University in Toronto, Ontario between 3:00- 5:00pm. The weather conditions of the location on both days was windy and sunny and the temperature ranged from 10-14 . The experiment was done in groups of 4 which included Aziza, Sahar, Paula and Shahana. The purpose of this experiment was to observe if competition and distribution of resources, among plants affects plant size by using different sampling techniques. This experiment consisted of recording average leaf size, crowding, number of Common Plantain plants, total number of leaves, number of leaves in sunlight and sunlight percentage. The plant was identified by its oval leaves and a quadrat was used to sample the distribution of Common Plantain plants. The quadrat was placed randomly on the grassland 70 times on the first day and another 70 times on the second day. A total of 140 replicates was collected on both days. For each plant, the size of the leaves was determined by measuring from where the stem attaches to the leaf of the plant to the tip of the leaf. This was measured in inches using a measuring tape and the leaf sizes were averaged for each plant being observed. Crowdedness of the plant was determined by observing the amount of other plant species surrounding the Common Plantain. A scale was used which was 0=no other plant species, 1=very little plant species, 2= quite a lot of other plant species and 3= lots of other plant species. Sunlight exposure which was a percentage was determined for each individual plant, by dividing the number of leaves exposed to sunlight by the total number of leaves. This was then multiplied by 100 to get a percentage. There was not a large abundance of Common Plantain plants at the location which is why for some of the replicates there was no data. Low temperatures could have played a role which limited the abundance of Common Plantain in the grassland.

本数据集分两日采集，分别为2015年10月19日（周一）与2015年10月26日（周一）。采样工作于加拿大安大略省多伦多市约克大学的丹比草地开展，时段为每日下午3:00至5:00。两日天气均为大风晴朗，气温介于10至14摄氏度之间。实验以4人小组为单位开展，小组成员包括Aziza、Sahar、Paula与Shahana。
本实验的目的为通过采用不同采样技术，探究植物间的竞争与资源分配是否会对植株体型产生影响。本次实验记录的指标包括平均叶片尺寸、植株拥挤度、普通车前草（Common Plantain）的植株数量、总叶片数、受光叶片数以及光照占比。
实验通过植株的椭圆形叶片识别普通车前草，并采用样方（quadrat）对其分布进行采样。首日在草地随机布设样方70次，次日同样布设70次，两日共计采集140组重复样本。
针对每株植株，叶片尺寸通过测量茎与叶片连接处至叶尖的长度得到，使用卷尺以英寸为单位进行测量，并对单株所有叶片的尺寸取平均值。植株拥挤度通过观察普通车前草周边其他植物物种的丰度进行判定，采用四级评分标准：0代表无其他植物，1代表周边植物极少，2代表周边植物较多，3代表周边植物极多。
单株植株的光照暴露百分比通过将受光叶片数除以总叶片数，再乘以100计算得到。该采样区域内普通车前草的种群丰度并不高，因此部分重复样本未能采集到有效数据。低温可能是限制该草地普通车前草种群规模的因素之一。