https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1202115/full

The article I chose to critically review discussed the drivers of plant biodiversity in urban landscapes. Before opening the article, I had a very vague outline of the drivers, but didn’t really know enough to teach someone about the subject. They do a great job discussing Urban Green Space, and how those spaces function inside of an Urban Functional Unit. This is something important to discuss because come to find out, the presence of Urban Green Space is single handedly one of the largest drivers of plant biodiversity.

The authors describe their experiment as taking small test plots, a different size for each type of plant they are looking to collect data on. I think this poses a problem with some of the results. By surveying a large plot for the number of trees vs a smaller plot for the number of shrubs and herbaceous, there could be a big difference in the number of plants, and the standard deviations across the various plots. The reasoning behind this may be due to the fact that trees cover significantly less surface area than some shrubs or herbaceous vegetation, but I think it is more important to keep a constant in the study, which the scientists failed to do.

Another thing that I find interesting is the failure of the scientists to post somewhat readable data. All of the visual charts that the scientists posted in the article were very hard, almost impossible to read. This very well could be a technology failure and not a failure of the scientists, but it is a very interesting thing to make note of.

The thing the authors do really well is laying out the information found in the study very clearly. They make sure that each individual driving factor is explained really well, and give ample reasoning why each driving factor is a driving factor. It is laid out very clearly as well, and is easy for someone who may not be used to reading scientific information, especially myself. 

Overall, the authors did a really good job of writing the article. There may be some questions about the process of surveying the plants, but the factors that were done well supersede those in my opinion. It was easy to understand, and yielded a happy reader with more understanding of the topic.