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Ominous clouds and JERP at the Bunny Hill

Dear Blog-stars,

Well, we are done for the week and it was pretty tiring, but we are doing well! Julie has nothing positive to say, only that our experience thus far has been ‘buggy’. Indeed.

We are now kicking back in the mando and the Raj Mahal on an exciting Friday night. So exciting that I am bloggin’. We survived the 99 garden with its crazy rows and snippiness by all. I did have to eat a little crow because of some mis-lableing of rows on my part and the shocking rightness of Julie and Rachel. Needless to say, we consulted them in the inbreeding garden when Colin screwed up (again). He can, however, add much better than me.

Here are some pictures:

Big clouds at Hague Lake

Jameson planting his garden

Sweet sweet clouds and boring corn

Bee and loads of pollen this morning

Andy

The Insect-Plant BLOG of Sweden….

If y’all like nerdy blogs, check out this one, made by a guy named Johann in Sweden:

http://insect-plant.blogspot.com/

Well, we are off to bed in the men’s condo, or the ‘mando’. I am excited to use the new shower caddy that Colin assembled earlier in the day.

I think Stuart’s idea about measuring anther asymmetry is definitely do-able, especially if we can do some neat batch files to process the pictures automatically. I think this technology exists, as one of Stuart’s volunteers did something similar at the CBG.

Andy’s Problems

Andy’s problems for the summer:

1. How to transfer large (> 2.0 Gb) of video from the cameras to the hard drives. Right now, it is taking 70 minutes per 2.0 Gb, which is really too long. I am hoping that if I can switch to Josh’s USB 2.0 computer the transfer rate will be much higher. This is probably the biggest problem I need to solve this summer, but there is not much time!

Breaking News!: I just used the USB 2.0 on Josh’s laptop, and the transfer speed is about 30 times faster – yahoooo! Now, I just have to figure out how to keep track of all the videos and how to switch them in the common garden without getting totally confused.

2. Deciding which variables to measure for the path analyses. Some we have thought of so far: population identity, inbreeding status, number of leaves, number of flowering heads, # of pollinators visiting per unit time, style persistence, distance to nearest flowering neighbor, distance from edge in the common garden. The final variables of interest would be # seeds produced and perhaps pollen viability.

3. I need to figure out how to test the viability of Echinacea pollen.

4. How to measure FA in the plants. Leaves and inflorescences should be measured in some manner. The disk itself could be measured for radial symmetry, too. On the inflorescences, the petals themselves can be measured, as well as petals on opposite sides of the head, or across the entire head, as it should be radially symmetric.

Some wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) webworm damage. Wild parsnip is an exotic weed found throughout the midwest. It’s chemical ecology has been well studied by May Berenbaum and Art Zangerl at U of Illinois.

Wild_parsnip_damage.JPG

Andy’s Wild Ride to Minnesota

19 June 2007

Andy McCall reporting here. I drove from OH to Minnesota last Friday. It was a trying commute for a number of reasons. After preparing for the summer and trying to rid myself of a strange contagion I may have contracted in Costa Rica last month I took off from Granville, OH to Chicago, where I was to meet Stuart.

All was well until I hit the hellish highway snag that is Chicagoland. I was not expecting the horrors that I encountered. I WAS however, prepared for tolls on US 90, bringing about ten dollars in change. The first toll came to a grand total of 15 cents. I didn’t know that anything, even candy, cost fifteen cents anymore. I used to buy subsidized milk in elementary school for that amount. The next toll was 50 cents – OK, the next toll was 100 meters later and was $2.50. I submit this question to you, dear reader, “What is up with that?��? Why wasn’t it $3.00 in the first place? – I didn’t even see a darn exit in between the tolls.

OK, enough about tolls. I called Stuart telling him of the construction on I-90, suggesting that I was 40 minutes away. Three hours later I arrived in Highland Park, right across the street from the Chicago Botanic Garden. We stayed for about 30 minutes, chatting through the din of the cicadas that had emerged en masse in the Chicago area. Stuart drove my car and we talked of many things, as we had 6hrs in the car.

After arriving in MN, I went down to Northfield for my 10th College Reunion. It was grand, and saw many a familiar face. I also got to visit Carleton’s own prairie restoration, where I had worked years before under the tutelage of Dr. Mark McKone. I took several pictures of prairie plants and their associated insects. From the prairie you can even see Carleton’s giant windmill. St. Olaf has copied us and now has a big one right as you enter Northfield on Hwy 19. I picked up Colin Venner at the MSP airport and then we were on our way!

Heliopsis Heliopsis_small.JPG

Amorpha canescens Amorpha_small.JPG