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My, oh my how time flies! It seems hard for me to believe that today is already my last day. Working with Stuart, Gretel, the Echinacea Project volunteers, and the rest of Team Echinacea over the past year has been a wonderful experience. I have learned a tremendous amount and I feel very fortunate that I had the opportunity to spend time working on such a great project with such a terrific group of people! Keep of the good work and good luck Team Echinacea 2015! – Jared
Laura joined began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2014 after retiring from a career at Abbott Laboratories. Though she has only been with the Echinacea Project a short time, Laura’s background in quality assurance and her lifelong interest in plant biology have already proved valuable in the lab. She has helped clean Echinacea heads, count achenes, and enter data among many other tasks. Apart from her work with the Echinacea Project, Laura volunteers with a charitable organization devoted to helping children in Lake County. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Shelley joined the Echinacea Project in 2015 making her the newest addition to our team of citizen scientists. During her brief time with the Echinacea Project, she has helped clean Echinacea heads and randomize achenes. Shelley has long been fascinated with prairies. She planted her very own prairie restoration and volunteers as a land steward at Wadsworth Prairie Nature Preserve. In her spare time, Shelley enjoys spending time outdoors restoring the native habitats on her property and exploring local natural areas. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
After retiring from a career as an industrial chemist, Aldo began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden where he worked to restore and manage the Garden’s native habitats. Aldo joined our team of citizen scientists in 2001. While working with the Echinacea Project, he has cleaned Echinacea heads and counted many achenes. In fact, Aldo has counted nearly 200,000 Echinacea achenes! During his research career, Aldo helped develop numerous products used in the agriculture and horticulture industries. He holds more than 40 U.S. Patents! This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
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After Susan retired from her career as a nurse practitioner, she joined her sister and began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2011. Though she spends spring and summer working in the rose garden, Susan volunteers her time to the Echinacea Project during the winter months. She contributes to our research by cleaning Echinacea heads and counting achenes (she has counted 30,000 achenes!). Outside of her work at the Garden, Susan enjoys spending time biking, golfing, and spending time outdoors. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
After retiring from a career in sales, Bob’s lifelong enthusiasm for the outdoors led him to begin volunteering with the Chicago Botanic Garden. While working in the Garden’s prairies and woodlands, Bob helped plant native prairie, cleared brush, identified insects, and even discovered his artistic talents while sketching fungal specimens. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2001, he has counted over 200,000 achenes! Outside of the lab, Bob remains active with the Boy Scouts of America and continues to cultivate his artistic talents through painting and photography. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Marty, a retired high school chemistry teacher, began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2004. Although she remains skeptical of biology, Marty grew up gardening and enjoyed working with plants in the production garden. She joined the Echinacea Project in 2014 and has been busy scanning and counting Echinacea achenes. In her spare time, Marty enjoys spending time outdoors at her summer home in Maine. She also competes regularly in the senior Olympics with her volleyball team! This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Anne joined the Echinacea Project’s volunteer team in 2007 after learning about volunteer opportunities with the Chicago Botanic Garden through her local garden club. During her time with the Echinacea Project, she has helped with nearly every lab task from cleaning heads to counting achenes. In fact, Anne has counted more than 300,000 achenes! She also volunteers with the Garden’s seed bank helping to clean and prepare seeds for future habitat restoration. Outside of her work at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Anne works part time and is an active member of her church congregation. This is one in a series of profiles recognizing the hard work and dedication of citizen scientists volunteering for the Echinacea Project at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
This project builds on the Echinacea Project’s longitudinal demographic dataset from remnant prairies to explore the role fire plays in the reproduction of Echinacea angustifolia. In 2014, Claire Ellwanger and Jared Beck monitored the daily phenology of 324 flowering heads belonging to 143 plants that flowered in 2014 and gathered demographic information on 523 individuals within burned and unburned portions of Staffanson Prairie Preserve. Additionally, we collected 84 flower heads to assess seed set in 2014. Using this data and the data collected in previous years, we will integrate spatial, phenological, and demographic information from individuals at Staffanson Prairie to build a longitudinal database and evaluate the effects of prescribed fire on Echinacea survival and reproduction. Our methods for collecting demographic and phenological data were identical to the procedures used in the projects “EA demo”, “phen in six remnants,” and “phen for Aii” except that we mapped nearest flowering neighbors. We mapped out to the 7th nearest flowering neighbor for focal plants on the SPP transect. Jared wrote an R function (looky) to streamline searching for nearest neighbors in the field. This function specifies a search radius and creates a map of all mapped flowering plants for a given site within that search radius. In addition to using looky, we targeted our searches near the edges of Echinacea clusters and where there were known Echinacea plants near the transect to increase the efficiency of our searches. Read previous posts about this experiment. Start year: 2007 Location: Staffanson Prairie Preserve Products: Survey, demography, phenology, and style persistence datasets need to be made readyR. The Echinacea heads collected in 2014 are being processed at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Overlaps with: EA demo, phen in six remnants, and phen for Aii |
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