On Friday we finished measuring p1! This was a big push to get it done last week and on Friday it took some expert timing and carful radar studying but we got it done.
The waterproof measuring crew
This was a massive feat for the team, and it is super exciting to have it done. There are 10,673 total positions, out of that we found 2,899 basal plants, and 81 flowering plants, we found around 3,523 staples. Thanks to Wyatt’s Time Motion Study we know that we spent 198 person hours measuring p1. Below you can see our nice completed map of p1!
Lavender are completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
I now have some coding to do to get ready for rechecks but for now the team is having a well-deserved break from measuring p1.
I missed a day but we have made significant progress measuring in the past few days.
On Wednesday (Aug 18) we dropped the number of segments from 32 to 19 in an afternoon with 2 measuring pairs. This was Allie’s last day measuring and we very much missed her today.
Lavender are completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
Today (Aug 19) we missed Allie and John but not so much that we couldn’t get anything done. The opposite in fact we got 11 segments done with 2 pairs (5 people) in ~4 hours. We have 8 segments left (woo!), today was very much a penultimate day and tomorrow might be a very big day out in p1 check back tomorrow to find out how we did.
Lavender are completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
On Friday the team made great progress measuring, with the help of Gretel (World Record holder for fastest measurer) the team completed 16 segments in ~3 hours with 3 measuring pairs. We now have finished the 99’s both north and south and are off in the Q-gen/big batch experiment. We have a total of 33 segments left out of 141 segments so we are 77% complete! This is amazing and I expect that we will be done before the end of the week.
Lavender is completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
Today the team continued working in the 1999 experiments. The measuring in these experiments feels slow because the plants are so densely packed but we got a good chunk done today.
With 3 measuring pairs in ~3 hours we got 12 segments done. The map makes it seem like all of 99north is done but there are actually 3 segments in their that aren’t done. Tomorrow we will finish the 1999 experiment and start Big Batch/Q-Gen which is the big green chunk on the map.
Lavender is completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
On Friday the team measured 6 segments in ~1.5 hours with 3 measuring pairs in the 96, 97, 98 experiments. Friday also was when Amy W. made her annual measuring guest appearance.
Today we measured 11 segments with 3 pairs in ~3 hours. We completed the inbreeding, 96, 97, 98, experiments and started the 99 experiments. Tomorrow we will work on completing the 99 experiments which are a bit dense but we will get through them.
Lavender is completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
Today we continued our efforts in measuring p1. We finished the miscellaneous assortment of experiments (SPP, 2001, and Monica’s 2003) and we started working on the 96, 97, and 98 experiments. We had 4 measuring pairs going and in the course of ~2.5 hours we completed 21 segments.
As you can see below we have made a HUGE jump westward. The team has done an amazing job cranking through the plot. Next we will finish the 96, 97, and 98 experiments and keep working west into the inbreeding 1 experiment.
lavender is completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
Yesterday we continued our measuring progress we starting working on a miscellaneous assortment of experiments, seeds from Staffonson, and two different 2001 experiments. The team completed 23 total segments with 4 measuring pairs in ~4 hours. This brings the total segments to 41 segments.
Below you can see the updated progress map, there has been a big jump in the purple between Aug 03 to Aug 04. The team will continue to work west ward today as we start the 96, 97, 98 experiments.
lavender is completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-E
One of the large tasks that the team does every year is measure the first experimental plot (p1). This is the largest of the the experimental plots with a daunting 10,673 total positions. The plot is broken up into 46 rows, some of these rows are so long that we have broken them up into segments. There are 141 total segments.
I will be posting daily (or close to daily) updates on our measuring progress right here on the flog. Yesturday (Aug 03 2021) was our first day of measuring p1. We start with one of the inbreeding experiments, the team measured a total of 18 segments over the course of 3 ish hours with 4 measuring pairs.
Below I have attached a map of the plot, it is colored with which positions have been measured and what we have yet to do. There is a lot left to do but we have made GREAT progress for just one day!
lavender is completed records green is what we have left. positions go N-S rows are W-e
The oldest plants in our experimental plots are turning 25 years old this year. Happy almost birthday to them! I set off on a mission to determine how many of these plants are still alive so we know how much cake we need to celebrate. These plants are in the oldest portion of our oldest experimental plot (exPt01), they were planted in 1996 and every year since we have visited each plant and recorded various traits.
The first year that these plants flowered was in 1999, a total of 10 plants flowered in this first year. If we look at survival as of 2019 only 251 of the original 646 plants are still alive. Of these 251 surviving plants five of these plants have never flowered! They have been alive for 26 years and never flowered, they have only been producing basal rosettes (just leaves nothing else), all these years. On the other end of the flowering frequency spectrum, one plant has flowered during 16 of the 26 years that it has been alive, that is a 62% flowering rate. To show the high variation in flowering frequency I made the following histogram, the majority of plants have flowered a total of nine or four times.
As I continue to work through the 2020 data from our experimental plots I will be posting more “Random Fun Facts” with Mia so stay tuned to learn more about what is going on in the experimental plots!
Stopped by P8 this morning and snowshoed out to P2. If you like these plots in the summer, the winter offers a new, unique perspective of the beauty of a prairie. The last few days, all vegetation has been covered in hoarfrost so the prairie lacks all color and seems like a black and white movie scene.
My dog Clyde (official spelling changed to Collyde). If you could meet him, you would understand.
On the south side of the P2, overlooking the plot.
