Our research aims to investigate potential correlations between plant diversity and fungal diversities in various parks in New York City. The main takeaway from this project is to understand how various species influence one another in an ecosystem, and what it means for the ecosystem’s equilibrium when there is an overabundance of one species over another. We were curious as a group about the contrast between New York City’s urban nature and its parks teeming with life not visible to the untrained eye. Another concept that we were curious about was whether the city impacted the diversity found within the parks, and how plants and fungal species coexisted in these places. We relied on iNaturalist to gather data from parks that were at least 15 acres in size. The parks were spread throughout the five boroughs and their respective plant and fungal species numbers were recorded for further analysis.
Names: Carolina Fernandez, Syad Salim, Sahaf Khan, Meriam Ikhibi
