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Project status update: Echinacea hybrids-exPt 6

In 2015, we continued an experiment investigating fitness of Echinacea angustifolia x E. pallida hybrids. This year, out the the original 66 plants, 55 were still alive. That’s an impressive survival rate of 83% since they were planted in 2012. The mean leaf length of the plants was roughly 16 cm. In the summer of 2011, Nicholas Goldsmith and Gretel Kiefer performed reciprocal crosses between 5 plants of Echinacea pallida (non-native) found in a prairie restoration at the Hegg Lake Wildlife Management Area and 31 plants of the native Echinacea angustifolia from experimental plot 1 to determine the hybridization potential of these two species. In the summer of 2012, team members planted 66 seedlings.

Read more flog posts about this experiment here.

Echinacea Pallida on Hegg Lake

Echinacea Pallida on Hegg Lake

Start year: 2012

Location: Experimental plot 6

Citizen Scientist Week

This Saturday is National Citizen Science Day and in honor of our wonderful, hard-working citizen scientists (and interns), we’d like to show you all the fun science that occurred in the Echinacea Lab this past week. We also created an official page telling you more about our volunteers that can be found here.

 

Tuesday

Tuesday is quite a busy day for us and we had many people in the lab throughout the day. In the morning we had Susie, Char, Lois, Susan, Sarah, and Rachael working on a variety of projects.

Susie randomizing

Susie randomizing heads and Char cleaning heads from P1 – our main experimental plot.

Lois "The Achene Queen" - our most decorated counter with more than half a million achenes counted to date!

Lois “The Achene Queen” – our most decorated counter with more than half a million achenes counted to date!

Sarah scanning heads from the remnant populations while Susan focuses hard on cleaning.

Sarah scanning heads from the remnant populations while Susan focuses on cleaning.

In the afternoon we had a large crew that worked on cleaning, scanning, and randomizing. Unfortunately, we forgot to pull out our cameras and didn’t get any pictures of them in action! Expect a follow up post next week to see them doing vital work for the Echinacea Project. Our afternoon citizen scientists were Marty, Naomi, Laura, Anne (usually a Friday person), and Shelley and you can read more about them at our permanent volunteer page.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning we had two volunteers and two interns. One of them wishes to remain anonymous, but the other three were enthused by their prospective internet fame.

Katherine works on rechecking cleaned heads. We like efficiency here, but never at the sake of bad data so we have many checks throughout the process to ensure high quality data.

Katherine works on rechecking cleaned heads. We like efficiency here, but never at the sake of bad data so we have many checks throughout the process to ensure high quality data.

Keke works on her report about the parents of our newly planted (as of last fall) experiment. Contributions like Keke's allow us to continue to expand the field of Evolutionary Ecology.

Keke works on her report about the parents of our newly planted (as of last fall) quantitative genetics experiment. Contributions like Keke’s allow us to continue to expand the field of Evolutionary Ecology.

Nina works on her final poster for her competition experiment. It was her last day as an intern with us and we're sad to see her go but excited to play a part in the early career of an up and coming scientist.

Nina works on her final poster for her competition experiment. It was her last day as an intern with us and we’re sad to see her go but excited to play a part in the early career of an up and coming scientist.

Thursday

We had a busy morning on Thursday followed by a quiet afternoon. Our fearless leader (Stuart) left to brave the intense heat of Minnesota (82 F) and spread some native prairie seed around our experimental plots.

Suzanne works on randomizing achenes from the remnant populations for X-ray.

Suzanne works on randomizing achenes from the remnant populations for X-ray.

Bill counting achenes. Bill is an expert counter who has been known to count as many as 31 heads in a single sitting!

Bill counting achenes. Bill is an expert counter who has been known to count as many as 31 heads in a single sitting!

Char and Susie back again! Suzanne was certainly focused on randomizing.

Char and Susie, back again! Suzanne was certainly focused on randomizing.

Friday

Friday normally has two volunteers and two interns but because Anne came in on Tuesday we had two interns and only one volunteer in the afternoon.

Gordon ponders the meaning of many years of data at Staffanson Prairie Preserve.

Gordon ponders the meaning of many years of data at Staffanson Prairie Preserve.

Mackenzie scans heads from our remnant populations.

Mackenzie scans heads from our remnant populations.

Leslie works on rechecking cleaned heads. Over the years, Leslie's dedication to accuracy has led to her being our main rechecker.

Leslie works on rechecking cleaned heads. Over the years, Leslie’s dedication to accuracy has led to her being our main rechecker.

 

As we wrap up the week, we want to make sure that our many citizen scientists, who help keep our lab running, are greatly appreciated. Though Saturday is National Citizen Science Day, in the Echinacea Project lab, every day is Citizen Science Day.

Project status update: Inbreeding experiment – INB2

Reina, Pamela, and Mike with the photosynthesis machine used in Kittelson et al. (2015)

In 2015, we continued to study the effects of inbreeding on Echinacea angustifolia fitness. This experiment was planted in 2006 where each plant was produced from one of three cross types: between maternal half siblings; between plants originating from the same remnant, but not sharing a maternal parent; and between individuals from different remnants. We continued to measure fitness and flowering phenology in these plants.

This year, of the original 1443 plants in INB2, 561 were still alive. Of the plants that were alive this year, 8.3% were flowering and 76.3% have never flowered – we’re still waiting! Among the plants that were flowering, mean head count was 1.53 heads, with a maximum of five heads.

Read more posts about this experiment here.

Start year: 2006

Location: Experimental plot 1

Overlaps with: Phenology and fitness in P1

Products: Fitness measurements were collected during our annual assessment of fitness in P1.

The following paper was published in summer 2015 based on fieldwork conducted in 2013.

Kittelson, P., S. Wagenius, R. Nielsen, S. Qazi, M. Howe, G. Kiefer, and R. G. Shaw. 2015. Leaf functional traits, herbivory, and genetic diversity in Echinacea: Implications for fragmented populations. Ecology 96:1877–1886. PDF

Looking for a new data collection system

Team Echinacea is currently trying to find a data collection system to replace our old trusty Visors. Interestingly enough, the problem isn’t with the visors themselves, nor with the forms system we’re using (an old version of Pendragon Forms), but with the computer that has our version of Pendragon. It’s an old version so we can’t get a copy for another computer, and the computer isn’t going to make it much longer. We have some temporary fixes in mind (more to come on that) but we’re looking for a long term replacement for our lovable, early-2000s technology. We posted a question to Ecolog and in the past week we have received several responses. Here’s a summary of the findings in case you can’t make it to Ecolog this week:

  • A Nexus 7 with Google Sheets for data collection. A cheap mobile data plan allows for data syncing throughout the day. A case that has a wrist strap so it’s more portable and a portable battery to help with battery life. Cost $350 at time of purchase.
  • Samsung Tab4 tablets (refurbished from Amazon) and an external Garmin GPS that connects via Bluetooth. Data collection is done with open data kit and the ODKCollect app for Android
  • iPad mini using the Numbers app to collect data. The important thing is not to use a big case, apparently an Otterbox can cause overheating quite quickly in direct sunlight.
  • Using an HP Stream 7 tablet running windows with MS Access for data entry. The main problems were screen glare, even when using an anti-glare cover, and buttons being too small on forms. Overall: not recommended
  • Small field laptops (Panasonic Toughbooks) with Real Time Research Field Forms

In brief:

The hardware: Nexus 7, Samsung Tab4, iPad mini, HP Stream 7, and Panasonic Toughbooks

The software: Google Sheets/Forms, Open Data Kit, Numbers app, Fulcrum app, EpiCollect, Pendragon Forms, MS Access, Real Time Research (RTR) Field Forms

We were surprised to see that no responses from people using phones for data collection, so if you are using phones, we’d like to hear from you. Right now, we’re not sure exactly which direction we’ll take but the software options we’re leaning towards are Open Data Kit and Pendragon Forms. Our team intends to do a trial run in the upcoming field season and deploy as many as 15 devices starting in June. We’re going to be giving updates in our blog, so follow along at echinaceaProject.org/datacollectionsystem. We set up comments on our website so if you have any suggestions, thoughts, or words of encouragement, stop by our website and let us know.

Project status update: Inbreeding experiment – INB1

The functional trait machine used in the Kittelson et al. paper.

In 2015, we continued to study the effects of inbreeding on Echinacea angustifolia fitness. This experiment was planted in 2001 where each plant was produced from one of three cross types, depending on the relatedness of the parents: between maternal half siblings; between plants from the same remnant, but not sharing a maternal or paternal parent; and between individuals from different remnants. We continued to measure fitness and flowering phenology in these plants.

This year, of the original 557 plants in INB1, 157 were still alive. Of the plants that were alive this year, 23.4% were flowering and 24.9% have never flowered. Among the plants that were flowering, average head counts was 2, with a maximum of six heads.

Read previous posts about this experiment.

Start year: 2001

Location: Experimental plot 1

Overlaps with: Phenology and fitness in P1

Products:The team collected fitness measurements during our annual assessment of fitness in all plants in P1.

The below papers were published in summer 2015:

Kittelson, P., S. Wagenius, R. Nielsen, S. Qazi, M. Howe, G. Kiefer, and R. G. Shaw. 2015. Leaf functional traits, herbivory, and genetic diversity in Echinacea: Implications for fragmented populations. Ecology 96:1877–1886. PDF

Shaw, R. G., S. Wagenius and C. J. Geyer. 2015. The susceptibility of Echinacea angustifolia to a specialist aphid: eco-evolutionary perspective on genotypic variation and demographic consequences. Journal of Ecology 103:809-818. PDF

Lake Forest College Mini-internship

Over the course of four Wednesdays spread throughout November and October, we in the Echinacea lab were fortunate enough to have two students from Lake Forest College’s plant biology course. These students, Daniel and Kyle, looked at this year’s (2015) flowering plants that were in the aphid addition and exclusion experiment. They dissected, scanned, counted, and x-rayed the seed heads to determine seed set in these plants then made a poster and did a presentation for their class. It was wonderful to have them here and their contribution to the Echinacea Project will be very useful as we move on with the aphid addition and exclusion experiment.

You can find their poster here.

Aphid addition and exclusion

This summer, Gina Hatch and Abby VanKempen continued a project examining the effects of aphid herbivory on Echinacea angustifolia survival and fitness. This year they found 70 of the original 100 study plants (33 addition and 37 exclusion). Starting July 14th going until August 20th, Abby and Gina visited plants twice each week for a total of 12 visits per plant. On each visit, the plant received its treatment: either adding aphids from other plants if it was in the addition group or removing all aphids if it was in the exclusion group. At the end of the summer, Abby and Gina used the number of leaves with chew marks and holes (signs of foliar herbivory) to quantify herbivory. There was not a significant difference in herbivory between the two treatment groups, where herbivory was measured as the proportion of damaged leaves (p = 0.74). On September 14th and October 15th, Ali Hall took measurements of senescence including number of brown and purple basal and cauline leaves. These have not yet been incorporated into an analysis.

This collection plant had some of the most aphids we've seen yet in one place!

Read more posts about this experiment here.

Start year: 2011

Location: P1

Overlaps with: Phenology and fitness in P1

Products: Fitness measurements were collected during our annual assessment of fitness in P1. A list of focal plants and addition/exclusion datasheets are located in Gina Hatch’s Dropbox folder and can be found here. Gina created a poster and presented at Carleton’s summer research symposium and her poster can be found here. Abby plans to present at the Elbow Lake Library. The senescence data can be found here.

 

Gina’s aphid poster

Gina made a poster for Carleton’s summer research symposium. The symposium happened a while ago but you can relive the experience by looking at her poster!

Effects of the specialist aphid, Aphis echinaceae, on overall herbivory of Echinacea angustifolia

You can find it here.

Efficiency of collection and sorting techniques on Galium boreale seeds

For his REU, Ben Lee designed an experiment to test different methods of seed collection and sorting on Galium boreale. In the 2015 fall burn unit of Hegg Lake WMA, he placed six square ten by ten meter plots around patches of Galium. Ben randomly selected three plots to be machine harvested and the other three plots were chosen to be hand harvested. Hand harvesting was conducted by two team members at one time whereas machine harvesting was done by one person using a modified STIHL Shredder Vac. After harvest, Ben randomly selected three plots for machine sorting and the other three for hand sorting. Machine sorting was done using the dockage tester at the Hoffman Grain Elevator and hand sorting was done by pushing seeds through a standard window screen to remove the duff. Ben found no significant difference in efficiency (g/min) between the two harvest methods but did find that machine sorting is significantly more efficient than sorting by hand.

Measuring baby hybrids for Taylor's experiment!

The team at Hegg, close to Ben’s plots

Start year: 2015

Location: Hegg Lake WMA

Products: Ben wrote a report and created a poster that was presented at his school’s (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) summer research symposium. The poster can be found here.

All heads reporting for duty

We brought all of the harvested heads back to the lab. There are still 4 heads back in p1 that aren’t ready to harvest but everything is officially in Illinois!

All the heads with Amy and Ali for scale

All the heads with Amy and Ali for scale