After a spell of hot weather this past week, today offered the team a nice break from the heat. With temperatures in the 70’s today, it was a beautiful day to work outside. In the morning, Mike and I went out to Hegg Lake to help Kory with his pollinator research. The rest of the team was divided between doing independent data collecting at various sites and collecting pollen in the morning. In the afternoon, the team split and worked on independent projects. After a relaxing cool afternoon, the town hall got an unexpected surprise. From clear to stormy, windy, and ominous looking, the sky turned on us within minutes. Thankfully nothing severe, but very fascinating instead. It added a nice turn of events for the day, and the cool air that accompanied it was most welcome!
-Reina
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The last few days have been quite steamy here in Douglas County, but Echinacea continues to flower and so our work doesn’t stop! A lot happened this morning for team echinacea. Sarah B continued her assessment of phenology in the remnants while Dayvis and Kory were at Hegg Lake continuing their independent projects. Gretel led a team to assess phenology in the common garden and Ilse and I went out to Staffanson to collect pollen for the cross experiment.
In the afternoon nearly everyone helped Amy finish searching for her plants out at Hegg Lake and were treated to ice cream afterwards. Ilse and I entered some data and practiced our artistic skills out in the common garden (i.e. painted some bracts). Looks like we’ll start the official crosses tomorrow! I made an enormous amount of fried rice for dinner tonight and a bunch of us crafted pollinator exclusion bags/cages while watching X-men. The forecast for tomorrow says it’s supposed to be a bit cooler, let’s hope so! Whoops! Looks like I forgot to post about Tuesday yesterday… Well, better late than never. Sarah B It was another hot day on the prairie front. We all broke off into little groups today to take care of business. This morning Reina, Mike, and Pam assed herbivory in INB1 and INB2. Kory, Marie, Sarah B, and Dayvis were all scattered about working on their independent projects. Lydia and Sara Z assed the maternal plants in the common garden that are to be involved in the crosses of the quantitative genetic experiment, and on the other side of things Gretel, Shelley (Gretel’s Mother), Ruth and I went to Landfill Core to gather pollen from the sires that are to be involved in the crossing experiment. We used toothpicks to scrape off the pollen into vials that will be used for pollenating the maternal plants in the common garden. We were able to get pollen from about 40 of 55 plants at the site. The 15 others were just a little too immature to collect pollen from today.
This afternoon encompassed an hour of stipa searching for some and then continuation of some independent work on projects. Herbivory assessment continued as well. Stuart, Gretel, Ruth and I went for a nice long walk around SPP. We walked a U-shaped transect and used a randomized scheme for assigning sires to be used in the quantitative genetics experiment. We caged/bagged heads that were to be used and gps-ed the plants. What a busy day! It was a quiet weekend in the townhall, as many of its residents were out of town. In the morning, an onslaught of heavy rain foiled Dayvis and Marie’s plans to visit Hegg Lake. Undeterred by the weather, Sarah B braved the elements to collect data on phenology in the remnants – it wasn’t long before she returned with soaking datasheets, though. In the afternoon, Sarah B, Marie, and Dayvis drove to Alexandria to do laundry and have lunch at their new favorite place to eat: Mi Mexico. If you are ever in need of a place to eat in Alex, I would encourage you to check it out! Dayvis decided to throw caution to the winds, and ordered deep-fried ice cream for desert.
Shown above: The festive interior of Mi Mexico, beloved lunchtime destination Due to last night stormy weather, most of us could not keep collecting data as in previous days. Marie could not measure her plants; Kory and I did not observe as many pollinators as normally we do. Only Sarah B. maintained her data collection immutable. Consequently, I went to the Hjelm house to start pinning the pollinators that I have been collecting since Sunday. After Jennifer and Stuart explained the principles of pinning insects, I could pinned fourteen of the twenty one insect collected during this week. Definitely, it will facilitate identification of pollinators enormously. Personally, this week was a very revealing week for me since I had the opportunity of witness the presence of the three species of echinacea in this region. Since my research involve the interaction among these species of echinacea, I have been very involved in observe the flowering and the location of the different species in this area. Thus, introduced Echinacea pallida started flowering (White pollen) at the Hegg Lake on Sunday while native angustifolia did the same on Tuesday (Yellow pollen).
Having dodged the misfortune of convening on Friday the thirteenth, Team Echinacea had a fruitful day in the field. The morning was occupied by independent projects. Kory, Jennifer, and Jon went to CG2 at Hegg Lake to look for pollinators visiting flowering Echinacea. Dayvis and Marie also went to Hegg Lake to gather data for their respective projects. Sarah B. once again visited multiple remnants to monitor flowering dates. Meanwhile, Lydia, Ilse, and Gretel assessed phenology and flowering head count in the Common Garden and ’99 South Garden to gear up for this summer’s pollination experiment. In the afternoon, Pam and Reina finished taking measurements of plants in INB2 for their study. The progress of their work benefited greatly from the recent acquisition of a Red Flyer wagon. Lydia (shown below) braved the wrath of protective ants in her quest to acquire blue aphids for her addition/ exclusion experiment. The rest of the team returned to CG2 to finish measuring plant fitness traits.
After a long day’s work, Dayvis cooked up a delicious meal of split pea soup and arepas (Venezuelan corn cakes). Many crew members are experiencing discomfort due to chigger bites, although some are more prone to vocalize their displeasure than others. Today was a great day for Team Echinacea. Most of us began our mornings searching for stipa and then went out to Hegg Lake where we finished measuring plants in Jennifer’s common garden! Woot woot! I took an photo of the group and was so excited that my finger made it into the photo…whoops! Dayvis continued to observed pollinators and Reina and Pam were super productive measuring photosynthetic rates of plants in INB2 (maybe it’s the new wagon they got for lugging around Helga).
At lunch Kory updated us with his progress on his pollinator efficiency project and Jennifer surprised us with a delicious watermelon as a treat for finishing up stuff at Hegg Lake. Marie did the honors of cutting up the watermelon (little did we know it was her first time).
The afternoon felt a bit like deja vu of the morning. We did another round of searching for stipa (rumor has it we’re just about half way done!) and then returned to Hegg Lake. Turns out we didn’t actually “finish” measuring plants…now it’s time to double check all the ones we didn’t find the first time. Looks like we’ll finish that up tomorrow though, and then be actually done with Hegg Lake for the weekend. Happy Thursday!
Today, the weather was beautiful and the team was able to make a lot of progress on several projects. In the morning, twist-tieing the heads in the common garden was finished up after several days of working on it. Most of the team then headed out to Hegg Lake to make a ton of progress inventorying the status of all the echinacea plants in common garden 2. My day consisted on making huge strides in gathering data on photosynthetic rate of the echinacea in the INB2 part of the common garden. We are almost 2/3 of the way done measuring! Later that day and back at the town hall, the team feasted on some delicious fajitas that Sarah Z. prepared for supper. Echinacea pallida started flowering on Sunday. Since then I have been able to observe, collect, and film the different species of insects that pollinate this plant. It has been such a wonderful experience to work surrounded by the beautiful landscape of the Hegg Lake Wildlife Management Area. I am so excited to start getting data that will elucidate the real possibilities of hybridization between Echinacea pallida and Echinacea angustifolia.
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