Different types of sources can be very helpful for different types of people in different scenarios. The three most common types of literature used in scientific writing are peer reviewed primary, secondary and tertiary literature. Peer reviewed primary literature contains content that is gathered firsthand by the author. The experiments are done, studies are conducted and results are collected and reported by the author themselves. The paper is then peer reviewed. This process can take quite some time, with the literature being looked over and approved by others in similar fields, to ensure the content is appropriate and accurate. One example of a peer reviewed primary source is a paper on elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges (Morreale et al., 2021). Secondary literature interprets another author’s work. The information is obtained from primary sources and the literature is written about it. These include things like reviews, critiques, studies and analyses. The raw data is not collected by the author. An example of this is the review written by Hanley et al. (2020) about coastal ecosystems. The final type of literature is tertiary literature. This is a compilation or summary of sources, often giving secondary sources but can be primary as well. This can be used as a resource or tool for people to use for references. This type of literature includes encyclopaedias, databases and catalogues. The Wikipedia page on the temperate deciduous forest is an example of this type of literature. Each type of literature can be used for its own individual scenarios.

Hanley ME, Bouma TJ, Mossman HL. The gathering storm: optimizing management of coastal ecosystems in the face of a climate-driven threat. Ann Bot. 2020;125(2):197-212. doi:10.1093/aob/mcz204

Morreale, L. L., Thompson, J. R., Tang, X., Reinmann, A. B., & Hutyra, L. R. Elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges. Nature communications, 2021;12(1), 7181. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27373-7   

Temperate Deciduous Forest. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_deciduous_forest. Published February 23, 2022.

Today, research and fact checking are incredibly important to do in order to get the best information regarding any topic. There are a variety of ways to gather research but even if a researcher gathers a lot of research, it is possible that they will miss important facts. To mitigate this, most researchers would look at peer-reviewed literature. To break it down further, there are three types of literature. Primary, secondary, and tertiary. Each are important on their own ways and can act as a means to continue researching and learning about a topic. In plant ecology, knowing which type of research to use is beneficial since some peer-reviewed sources use ideas and research from other sources.

Firstly, many researchers would look at tertiary sources to begin their research. While this type of source is not usually referenced in research papers, tertiary sources summarize a lot of the important research and findings of plant ecology. Additionally, these sources provide links to other resources and show where the author got their information from. Some examples of tertiary sources include encyclopedias, dictionaries textbooks etc. Wikipedia articles such as the article about Forest ecology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_ecology) since it gives an overview of major research findings and other important information on forest ecology (both plants and animals.

Next, researchers would look at secondary sources. These sources can also be found in textbooks and encyclopedias but are typically reviews of primary research articles. An example of this is the review: Trait-Based Plant Ecology by Nathan Swenson. This is a review of the book titled Plant Functional Diversity, organism Traits, Community Structure, and Ecosystem properties by Eric Garnier et al. the review summarizes the most important points in each chapter. The review is concluded by the author stating that the book is a good way for researchers to begin to think about trait-based ecology.

Finally, researchers would look at primary research literature. This type of literature always contains a section for methods and observations. Interviews, surveys, observations, and research papers are all examples of primary research because the researcher had collected the research with a team or by themselves. An example would be the article, Evolutionary ecology of plant–microbe interactions: soil microbial structure alters selection on plant traits by Jennifer Lau and Jay Lennon. This article discussed the influence that bacteria and other protozoa have on plant diversity. Additionally, they manipulated the soil environment to see the impacts that the differences would have on natural selection of plant traits.

For our film festival assignment, we had to choose three movies and explain why we chose one of them. The main movie I chose was a documentary called Parched and it was about the ongoing water crisis. One of the other movies I chose to nominate was the movie Wall-E. On the surface, it is cute children’s Disney movie that is about a little waste-collecting robot (WALL-E) and how he fell in love with a reconnaissance robot named EVE. Wall-E had deviated from his initial job to clean the earth to follow EVE back to the spaceship where the humans live. The movie does an excellent job at giving attention to the impact of climate change due to human actions (and inaction). Earth had become so unstable that human, animal, and plant life will not survive (obviously until the EVE robot takes a sample of a plant that had survived). According to the movie, the ecological collapse was due to the amount of waste on the planet, and it stayed inhabitable for a very long time. Humanity escaped the dying planet 700 years prior to the events of the movie. This relates to plant ecology because plant life is vital to the survival of the majority of life. Should, plants die off due to environmental instability, the same will happen to most living creatures. I say most because there are many species that can survive really harsh conditions such as tardigrades. However, we are seeing environmental instability, the loss of biodiversity and the extinction of so many species in real-time. This movie gives an insight of how the planet could potentially be like should we continue ignoring this crisis.

Janaki Ammal was an Anglo-Indian botanist who lived from 1897-1984. She was most famous for her work on plant cytogenetics, specifically in sugarcane and eggplant. Dr. Janaki Ammal first received an honours degree in botany from the Presidency College and went on to get her masters in botany from the University of Michigan. She then taught as a professor in India for a few years before returning to the University of Michigan for her PhD. Janaki’s most prominent work occurred when she joined the Sugarcane Breeding Station in Coimbatore. At the time, the sweetest and best variety of sugarcane was found mainly in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and was imported into India. She was successful in crossbreeding hybrids and altering the ploidy of the sugarcane species, creating a strain of an equally sweet Saccharum Spontaneum that was originally from India. Despite her success in these experiments, she faced discrimination due to her caste and gender from her coworkers, causing her to leave the Sugarcane Breeding Station. After leaving, Janaki was then invited by the Royal Horticultural Society to join their team and work as a cytologist, as the first salaried female staff member. Her chromosomal and ploidy studies and the book Chromosome Atlas of All Cultivated Plants she co-authored are still influential to botanists today. Janaki Ammal has multiple species named after her, most notably including a variety of magnolia shrub and a hybrid species of rose which can both be found in the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society. 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pioneering-female-botanist-who-sweetened-nation-and-saved-valley-180972765/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janaki_Ammal

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows anyone to search for information on a variety of topics. These topics range from people, plants, animals, companies, organizations and more. Though unfortunately it has gained a reputation of being considered to be unreliable because anyone can edit the articles that are posted. For this class I decided to edit the article about forest ecology. I noticed that the article had a notice at the top of the page stating that it needs more citations from reliable sources to be verified. The article itself is short compared to other related articles such as regeneration ecology, mountain ecology and others. Also, the article currently has 13 references. Only five of these references are from after 2010. Since it has been over a decade, I know that there is a lot more information that could contribute to this topic.

The process of creating a Wikipedia account is not difficult at all. You insert a username that is not shared by anyone else, create a password, add an email to verify the account and do a CAPTCHA security check. Afterword’s, you can edit your profile or follow the steps on Wikipedia’s suggested edits tab to (though I think this is here to help new Wikipedian’s learn to properly edit and eventually make articles). Our professor wanted us to make sure that we create a pen name or keep ourselves anonymous. I decided to use the same name as I have on my biology Tiktok account. I’m certain I can change it later if I don’t like it.

During the Wikipedia assignment for this course, I learned how to use the skill of understanding scientific content and explaining it in an objective, and clear to understand way for the general public. I had never edited a Wikipedia article before, and the experience has allowed me to appreciate all the work that goes into a project as large as Wikipedia, completely run by volunteers.  It has also allowed me to understand that Wikipedia can be a great place to begin to research a topic, as long as the information has a verifiable source. I have often been told by professors to never use Wikipedia, however I now know that when a Wikipedia article is well done, it can be a good starting point to find references to further understand a topic I am interested in. After frequently using Wikipedia to quickly research topics, it is very satisfying to be able to contribute to it by editing an article. The tutorials provided by the Wikipedia for students were useful to go through, even after having edited my article, as they outlined easy ways of doing things such as editing in the sandbox before publishing any edits, searching for images in the Wikipedia commons, and being careful when paraphrasing to avoid copyright violations, all of this will be helpful if I decide to edit a Wikipedia article in the future.