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After revisiting my site, I have decided to study Farlow’s seaweed (Farlowia mollis).
As I was revisiting the tide pools, I noticed that they all had different community compositions. Some species were present in almost all tide pools, whereas some were only found in tide pools that had a more consistent supply of “fresh” ocean water. Farlow’s seaweed was one of the species that was present in most of the tide pools. However, it seemed that its morphology varied between communities. Some of them grew very large, whereas others seemed unable to grow to any significant extent. I noticed that the smaller ones were found when Farlow’s seaweed was not a dominant member of the community.
These observations led me to think of competition between the different types of algae in the tide pools. It also led me to question Farlow’s seaweed’s ability to compete with other algae for nutrients. If other species were present that had the ability to out-compete Farlow’s seaweed for resources, then Farlow’s seaweed would not grow to a large size as nutrients would be limited.
My hypothesis is that the growth and morphology of Farlowia mollis is influenced community composition. I predict that Farlow’s seaweed will grow better in communities where it is higher in abundance vs more diverse communities.
A potential response variable would be the size of the algae (i.e. distance from base of algae to tip of longest branch). This variable is continuous, as a range of sizes can be measured.
A potential predictor variable would be presence of neighbours of different species. This variable is categorical.
