Thank you. By B=20% I mean that I will be 20% more certain of my estimate of the true number of single plants when I find a new population, count the stalks and roughly check how clustered they are, compared to ‘how confident I would be without this research’.
I will certainly look into works on other plants.
I think people just don’t bother. We don’t need to know exactly how many specimens are in a spot if we can say that mowing makes the environment more favourable to stalk production. We cannot really say much about genetic diversity and long-term conservation strategies, but considering that nobody is going to implement those strategies… It is, however, of some interest as to how such an ancient plant ‘games the system’ of the world we have—it is largely inbred, always must live with a fungus of some specificity, always ‘on the move’ (shrubbery incursion makes it die off, so it must produce spores before its window of opportunity is closed), glaciations have nudged it into retreats… and it still survives. It’s just an awesome little thing. *end of rant:)
Thank you. By B=20% I mean that I will be 20% more certain of my estimate of the true number of single plants when I find a new population, count the stalks and roughly check how clustered they are, compared to ‘how confident I would be without this research’. I will certainly look into works on other plants. I think people just don’t bother. We don’t need to know exactly how many specimens are in a spot if we can say that mowing makes the environment more favourable to stalk production. We cannot really say much about genetic diversity and long-term conservation strategies, but considering that nobody is going to implement those strategies… It is, however, of some interest as to how such an ancient plant ‘games the system’ of the world we have—it is largely inbred, always must live with a fungus of some specificity, always ‘on the move’ (shrubbery incursion makes it die off, so it must produce spores before its window of opportunity is closed), glaciations have nudged it into retreats… and it still survives. It’s just an awesome little thing. *end of rant:)