Nitrogen flow in a dune system

Abstract

The dune environment is harsh, lacking in many nutrients. One such nutrient is nitrogen. Insects can sense how much nitrogen is in a plant, and typically this plays a key role in determining herbivory of the plant. Our hypothesis was that plants growing farthest from the shoreline should not only have higher nitrogen content, but also have more herbivore damage because of these higher nitrogen levels. Nitrogen levels did, in fact, increase significantly with distance from the shoreline, but there was not a significant increase in herbivory with an increase in distance from the shoreline. There was, however, a trend towards increased herbivory as distance from shoreline increased, leading us to conclude that perhaps with more data points we would find a significant correlation between distance from shoreline and herbivory. It is probable that confounding variables besides nitrogen (for example increased plant diversity indexes) contributed to the non-significant results.