Small remnant Echinacea populations may suffer from inbreeding depression. To assess whether gene flow (in the form of pollen) from another population could “rescue” these populations from inbreeding depression, we hand-pollinated Echinacea from six different prairie remnants with pollen from a large prairie remnant (Staffanson Prairie) and from a relatively small population (Northwest Landfill) in 2008. We also performed within-population crosses as a control. Amy Dykstra planted the achenes (seeds) that resulted from these crosses in an experimental plot at Hegg Lake WMA.
We sowed a total of 15,491 achenes in 2008. 449 of these achenes germinated and emerged as seedlings. Each summer, we census the surviving plants and measure them.
In 2021, Amy Dykstra and Team Echinacea found 33 basal plants and 2 flowering plants (1 with vertical development only and 1 with one head). These were the first plants to flower in this experiment! The plant with one head grew from an achene produced by a between-population cross between a Steven’s Approach maternal plant and a Northwest Landfill pollen donor. The plant with vertical development grew from an achene produced by a within-population cross between a maternal plant from Aanenson and an Aanenson pollen donor.
For more details and graphs, see this brief report:
- Start year: 2008
- Location: Hegg Lake WMA
- Overlaps with: Dykstra’s local adaptation
- Data collected: Plant fitness measurements (plant status, number of rosettes, number of leaves, and length of longest leaf), and notes about herbivory. Contact Amy Dykstra to access this data.
- Samples collected: NA
- Products: Dykstra, A. B. 2013. Seedling recruitment in fragmented populations of Echinacea angustifolia. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Minnesota. PDF
You can read more about Dykstra’s interpopulation crosses, as well as links to prior flog entries mentioning the experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
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