Names: Tilly Chamberlain, Christina Franco, George Iskander, Alex Kaufman and Joanne Rajan
Description: Common Buckthorn forms thick hedges with long branches that invade native shrubs and herbaceous species, preventing the regeneration of native plants. We compared the species distribution of oats and the common buckthorn. We found that the invasive species, common buckthorn reduces the oat population, therefore we concluded that it reduces biodiversity as a whole. The reduction in biodiversity that the common buckthorn causes poses a problem for New York as it threatens valuable plant species that balance ecosystems and sustain human and animal populations.
