An ecologist studying plants in the desert performed the following experiment.
She staked out 2 identical plots, each of which included a few sagebrush plants and numerous small annual wildflowers. She found the same five wildflower species in roughly equal numbers on both plots. She then enclosed one of the plots with a fence to keep out kangaroo rats, the most common granivores of the area. After two years, four of the flower species were no longer present in the fenced plot, but one species had increased drastically.
Using the principles of community ecology, propose a hypothesis to explain the results and outline her methods and science processes (i.e. dependent variable, independent variable, controls, constants) as used in the experiment. What additional evidence would support your hypothesis?