In summer 2018, I harvested 80 seedheads from 12 remnant Echinacea populations (ALF, EELR, KJ, NWLF, GC, NGC, SGC, NNWLF, LC, RRX, NRRX, YOH) to study patterns of reproductive fitness. I sampled heads in two ways – (1) I randomly selected 20% of the individuals at each site (43 individuals) and (2) I randomly sampled up to 5 individuals from full factorial combinations of high, medium, and low spatial isolation and early, peak, and late flowering time (i.e., high spatial isolation/early flowering, high spatial isolation/peak flowering, etc.) across all sites (37 individuals).
In January 2019, I dissected seedheads that I collected from the NW sites (ALF, EELR, KJ, NWLF, GC, SGC, NGC, KJ, NNWLF). I extracted the achenes by row to observe temporal variation in seed set within heads. I x-rayed the achenes and assessed seed set in January.
Xray images that show whether achenes contain embryos or not
Start year: 1996
Location: Remnant prairies in central Minnesota
Overlaps with: Phenology in the Remnants, Gene Flow in Remnants
Products: Check back with the flog for preliminary results and annual reports.
You can read more about reproductive fitness in remnants, as well as links to prior flog entries mentioning the experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
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