In press, Ecology. Such findings have quite significant implications for all field biologists. The idea that the act of doing experiments may alter the behavior of the subjects has direct parallels to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. An unfortunate implication of this is that for species found to be strongly influenced by visitation, basic field studies may be inherently inaccurate. To put it mildly, we were a bit surprised by the findings of the initial study, and decided it would be a good idea to conduct some follow-up work.
Visitation can influence plant growth .
For several species, final biomass was strongly correlated with initial size. However - this was true only if the plants were visited every week. When plants were left alone for the duration of the experiment, there was no such correlation. Visitation influences community structure. These findings have very serious implications for those studies based upon the study of long-term permanent plots.