In summer 2022, Team Echinacea continued the aphid addition and exclusion experiment started in 2011 by Katherine Muller. The original experiment included 100 plants selected from exPt01 which were each assigned to have aphids either added or excluded through multiple years. The intention is to assess the impact of the specialist herbivore Aphis echinaceae on Echinacea fitness.
In 2022, Emma Reineke and Kennedy Porter conducted the aphid addition and exclusion project. They located 24 living exclusion plants and 17 living addition plants. Similar to the past two years, they did not find any aphids in exPt01, so they started to introduce a new population of Aphid echinaeceae into ExPt1. Learn more in the summer aphid update.
- Start year: 2011
- Location: Experimental Plot 1
- Overlaps with: Phenology and fitness in P1
- Data collected:
- Plant status (basal, flowering, not present), aphids present, ants present, herbivory (number of leaves significantly chewed on), and the number of aphids added/removed (depending on specific treatment)
- Protocols and datasheets are located at ~Dropbox\aphidAddEx\aphids2022
- Samples collected: NA
- Products:
- Andy Hoyt’s poster presented at the Fall 2018 Research Symposium at Carleton College
- 2016 paper by Katherine Muller and Stuart on aphids and foliar herbivory damage on Echinacea
- 2015 paper by Ruth Shaw and Stuart on fitness and demographic consequences of aphid loads
You can read more about the aphid addition and exclusion experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries mentioning the experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
Leave a Reply