Investigating the relationship between abiotic factors and species richness at the Fant Wildlife Area, Maidstone, Kent

The key abiotic factor found to affect the percentage cover of nettles in this investigation was soil temperature, with a 0.734 Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient between the two variables (showing a significant correlation where P<0.05). This is thought to be due to the fact that an increase in soil temperature will cause an increase in the metabolic activities of the nettle. This includes the catabolism of the starch in their rhizomes into substrates for respiration and the new growth it drives. This store of nutrients thus provides a natural advantage over the competition that is accentuated by an increase in temperature. Rising soil temperature adds to the effect of light intensity in driving photosynthetic production of hardy generalists like U. dioica.