Species richness, the number of biological species, is related to community productivity for a broad range of organisms found in different types of ecosystems (Grime 1973, Huston 1979, Begon et al. 1990, Rosenzweig and Abramsky 1993, Tilman 1993, Proulx 1998).  Community productivity is concerned with how each organism affects one another and their interactions.  Such interaction is competition.  Competition in the intertidal zone is important to document because the age of the Northern Atlantic seashores are only 20,000 years old.  It is still young and it is probable that its species richness will increase.  We, as humans, can learn about how they compete with each and how we can help the numbers of species richness to incease.

" Because Enteromorpha is one of the L. littorea's preferred food species and Chondrus is not eaten by snails, [Lubchencko] hypothesized that the observed correlation between littorine abundance and algal composition was casual.  It appeared that intense snail grazing may be eliminating ephemeral algae such as Enteromorpha and allowing inedible Chondrus to persist." (Lubchencko, 25)

            My study is similar, but I took it and incorporated a new hypothesis.  I hypothesized that the competition among different organisms will increase species richness and will play an important role on the environment.  An example of that competition would be the algal-algal competition that is mediated by herbivoric feeding habits.

            To prove this hypothesis, I followed Lubchenko's steps.  I chose 3 tide pools of the same height placement in the intertidal zone.  There were differences in containment of organisms in the tide pools: tide pool A had the same abundances of Chondrus crispus and Enteramorpha, it also had L. littorea's; tide pool B contained an abundance of Chondrus crispus and a few Enteromorpha, which also included L. littorea's; tide pool C contained an abundance of Enteromorpha and a few strands of Chondrus crispus, which contained few or very small amounts of L. littorea's. Graphs representing their abundance in each tide pool are below.

Pool A - Control

Pool B - Experiment: Removed L. littorea

Pool C - Experiment: Reintroduced L. littorea from Pool B