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Hybridization report

Check out the awesome final report that Aaron and Grace wrote about their work during their December internship. It details how they modeled hybridization between E. angustifolia and E. pallida from Hegg Lake. Cool stuff!

HybridLabReport2014.pdf

Opportunities Posted!

Hey everyone!

We just updated our website and have a brand new page listing all the ways you can get involved with The Echinacea Project. Check it out!

https://echinaceaproject.org/opportunities/

This summer we’re looking to hire both undergraduates and graduates interested in learning more about the evolution and ecology of prairie systems. If you know anyone who might fit the bill, pass this information along!

Additionally, we’ve added a new component to our application process that we’re calling a “brown M&M.” Stuart was inspired by a section of the book The Checklist Manifesto written by Atul Gawande where musician David Lee Roth (of the rock band Van Halen) famously demanded that all brown M&Ms be removed from his bowl of candy backstage. While it might seem like a ridiculous request, Roth was testing his concert venues. The clause where all brown M&Ms must be removed was buried deep within a huge document specifying all sorts of technical details about the production of Van Halen’s shows. If brown M&Ms were not removed from the candy bowl Roth knew that there must be other details that were probably missed and so he would cancel the show all together.

Here at The Echinacea Project we aren’t as stringent as Roth, but we have included our own form of a “brown M&M” on the project’s website. If any potential applicants are reading this and wondering how to make their application go above and beyond the call of duty, make sure you read carefully about The Echinacea Project’s summer field work and put “brown M&M” somewhere in your cover letter!

New Year!

Happy 2014 everyone! Here’s the latest news from The Echinacea Project.

Grace and Aaron, two students from Carleton who spent their winter breaks in the lab, finished up their internship on Friday. They did some great work with the E. angustifolia and E. pallida heads we collected from Hegg Lake. If you recall from the summer, Dayvis looked at the flowering phenology and pollinator assemblages of these plants. In short, Grace and Aaron followed up on Dayvis’ work by examining seed set (via x-ray AND weigh machine!) of the top, middle, and bottoms of each head. They were interested in determining the likelihood of hybrization occuring naturally between pallida and angustifolia and modeled this likelihood with the Dayvis’ phenology data from this summer. They created some beautiful, hand-drawn flowering schedules (shown below) and they’re working on finishing a report that we will post soon.

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Above: flowering schedule with pallida heads shown is blue and angustifolia shown in red. Below: flowering schedule with seed set of each section of each head written in pencil.

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We’re now tracking the progress of our 2013 heads with this handy-dandy white board chart. On the left we have all our experiments in the common garden and the number of heads in each experiment. The chart may look mostly empty, but that doesn’t mean our volunteers aren’t hard at work! We had people come in on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve! What dedication! We will keep you updated as this chart begins to fill up!

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Stay warm!