Here’s an improved version of my poster on my pilot study of Dichanthelium germination, which I presented at the Undergraduate Research & Arts Expo at Northwestern. It’s pretty much the same content, but less text and neater.
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Howdy folks, Sunday we had a real day off =) The weather was good and sunny, but not too hot. Random tidbits from the town hall: After the weekend break, it’s time for work again! Monday (today) we divided and conquered. Ruth bought some delicious fluffy spongy chocolate cake which we cleaned off the dish. PM – The two teams switched jobs. Stuart led Shona, Kelly, Andrew, Ruth and Greg in demo at KJs and On 27. The rest of us did CG1 rechecks, and then worked on independent projects. Here’s a file called “Crash Course in R”, which might be helpful to folks Now for some photos! Flowering Dichanthelium! I think this is a super cool picture as it shows 3 stages of Dichanthelium stigmas/anthers emergence. See how the bottom-most spikelet has the stigma just emerging, while the anthers are still inside; the middle spikelet is open and has both stigma and anthers well-exserted; and the top spikelet is closed and the anthers are drooping out from the spikelet.
Last but not least here’s an epic picture from our bonfire last year 😀 Hi guys, Saturday morning i woke up at 6am (body clock working on weekday schedule) and couldn’t go back to sleep, so i decided to watch the approaching storm, from the safety of the front door of the town hall. Saw some really interesting things that will sound like they were right from a children’s book but it was all true. The sky was a strange yellow glow. i’m guessing it’s because of the sunrise before a storm. In the north and northwest direction, there were dark clouds and low rumbling thunder in the background. But in the opposite direction, birds were chirping incessantly. The sun was literally gleaming above the dilapidated barn house. I saw a rabbit prancing across the neighbor’s front yard. I watched as storm clouds in the west covered and uncovered a double rainbow. Gradually the storm clouds moved from north to south. Some pattering of rain, and cool lightning chases in the north/northwest, accompanied by louder thunder. Around 6.50 i went back to bed. Jennifer was already up – she was going to meet Stuart at the Hjelm House at 8, and then go to Caribou Coffee in Alexandria to work on her manuscript for the whole day. Later in the morning, Katherine went to the common garden to do her aphids experiment, which took all day. Taking advantage of the cool temperature (high 70s with 10mph wind), Jill went out for a run at 10 and I went out for a slow jog at 11. Lydia, Andrew and Kelsey (Andrew’s special friend) went to Alexandria around noon – Andrew was showing Kelsey around. Kelly, Shona, and Jill went to the Starbuck beach in the afternoon and had lots of fun. Apparently there was lake itch at the first beach they went to but they found another beach on the same lake that didn’t have the itch. In the evening, Kelly and Shona went out for a run before going to Alexandria to watch The Dark Knight Rises. Andrew and Kelsey joined them at the movies. Oh, and the obligatory picture. My camera got really wet in the rain (i foolishly put it in my raincoat pocket), so it’s retired from service for now. But I still have tons of good pictures from this summer and the last, so no worries. And this is a really cool bug I found on Dichanthelium. It can climb vertically and upside down very well, and it seems to have suction pads on its feet. Photo courtesy of Lydia. Maria Friday the 13th of July! Sorry for the late posting. Weather report: Fieldwork report (morning): Kelly and Shona were out at Staffanson GPSing all the flowering Echinacea plants, including Kelly’s phenology plants. Andrew and Lydia were in C1 observing and catching pollinators for Andrew’s project. Lydia caught one pollinator. There wasn’t much activity in the garden. Jill was identifiying ants under the dissecting scope in the basement all morning. She found that many of them were Lasius and Formica. Katherine was working with the data from the aphid survey and conducting preliminary analyses. She is planning on performing aster analysis with her data. Ruth, Amy and Brad came over today. After lunch, we headed out to Hegg Lake to Amy’s plots where we measured seedlings that were sowed in 2008. We were out there until almost 6pm, impressive work!
Nope we did not sleep in until 9pm. On the contrary, we spent our Saturday morning doing fieldwork! Team Echinacea is really dedicated to our independent projects! Saturday was a clear day with cool temps in the morning but temperatures rose around mid morning. Kelly was doing phenology and Lydia was painting bracts and bagging heads for her crosses at the remnants. Yours truly was also at Hegg Lake from dawn till 11.30am, doing Dichanthelium pollen addition (only 4 spikelets needed pollen addition, looks like the Dichanthelium are finishing up flowering!) One of the great things about doing fieldwork in the early morning is the chance to witness spectacular views of the outdoors. I stopped several times on the way to my site to get pictures of this magnificence:
5:32am on Kittleson Road.
In the afternoon, some of us chilled out at home, took naps, went for a run, did groups abs exercise. Kelly, Lydia, Jill and Shona went to downtown Alexandria for some sightseeing and groceries. After they got back (around 8pm), we started making pancakes (gluten free corn pancakes, Katherine’s recipe) and Kelly’s authentic Spanish dish Tortilla Espanola. The pancakes turned out to be scrambled as we did not know the secret (=patience!). Thanks to the help of Jill and Shona, we managed to commence dinner at 9pm. After dinner, we all helped clean up. Then everyone (except myself because I had to get myself to bed) played bananagrams.
yay Kelly!
(Aghh I just finished writing and then when i tried to publish the site told me that my session had expired and of course I lost the whole blog post T___T ) Anyways… Some of us accomplished field work. To end off the week, here’s a special 6-leaved Virginia Creeper (they are usually 5-leaved) I found in the 99 south garden. Hope it brings everyone good luck! Maria here. I’m back for my second year with Team Echinacea on the field! I plan to continue work on Dichanthelium this summer. I had written a proposal for my summer project for a research scholarship earlier, here it is for your reference: And updates from the maternal lines germination experiment with seeds I collected last summer! Currently trying to figure out the nits and grits of the Dichanthelium hand pollination technique. Wish me luck, Uff da! Also been poking through my photos from last summer. It’s so funny how similar some of them are to this year’s photos. Hi everyone! Maria here. Sorry that I have not posted since the end of summer, but please rest assured that I’ve not run away with my Dichanthelium seeds, but have been working on them for the past -what? 6 months? A long and intimate relationship indeed. Brief summary of what has happened: I did a pilot germination & growth study using bulk Dichanthelium seeds. The results of germination study is nicely summarized in this poster that I presented at Midwest Ecology and Evolution Conference (MEEC) in Cincinnati 2 weekends ago(?). MEEC was fun and presenting (yapping about) my poster was a lot less nerve-wracking than I had expected: The seedlings are currently growing in the growth chamber at CBG. (There’s pictures in the poster of seedlings in agar and in plug trays!) I shall put up some more pictures sometime in the future. I should also post the R script I used to analyze data and produce the graphs on the flog – unfortunately don’t have the file on this computer. Right now I’m working on scarifying Dichanthelium seeds for my maternal lines growth and germination experiment (probably should explain in better detail later, likely in another poster). Other good news you might find interesting: If you have any questions about Dichanthelium or anything I talked about, you’re welcome to get in touch. My email is right under the entry title. After a good 3 months of sunshine and storms and flower-counting, it’s time to head back to civilization and school. Here are my project status updates and associated files. The doc files (MWang_Dichanthelium.doc and MWang_Compatophen.doc) explain what the associated documents are. Some files (perhaps older versions) can be found on the shared drive. Dichanthelium: Scanned datasheets that don’t really have much information: CompatoPhen: I will be continuing work on my projects in the fall. |
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