The prickly pear cactus, a species of the Opuntia genus located in the North American deserts.
Varying from yellow, red, or purple flowers they all have flat pads that resemble large leaves.
These pads provide the plant with several possible functions such as water storage,
photosynthesis, and flower production. The pads similar to other cactus have large spines on its
stems, these spines help the plant protect itself from predators. My hypothesis for this experiment
is that a plant with spikes will have less predators come across it, while if the plant has no spikes,
then more predators will be attracted to it. An experiment that can be conducted in order to test
this hypothesis would be to place the cactus in an environment without its spines and then again
with its spines and observe the number of predators that show up, the independent variable
would be the spikes and the dependent variable would be the number of predators that show up.
My prediction with this experiment would be that if the prickly pear cactus does not have its
spines, then there would be more predators present. Another hypothesis might be that if the
environment in which the prickly pear cactus resides has more rain, the pads of the cactus will
absorb more water than usual. Similar to the experiment for the other hypothesis, you would
place the cactus in two environments, one with no rain and one with a surplus of rain in the
coming future and examine the pads after a set amount of time, for example one month. In this
case the independent variable would be the amount of rain in the environment and the dependent
variable would be the amount of water absorbed by the pad. I would predict that the pad would
absorb more water when in an environment with more rain.
