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The Echinacea Project depends on a team of volunteers to process Echinacea heads collected in the field. In 2014, our 19 volunteers devoted 1915.25 hours to the Echinacea Project! Below is a summary of hours for 18 volunteers (I will update this post once I track down hours for the last volunteer).
|
Initials |
Hours |
| 1 |
AA |
164.00 |
| 2 |
LB |
47.25 |
| 3 |
ACo |
106.75 |
| 4 |
ACr |
205.75 |
| 5 |
KE |
72.00 |
| 6 |
SG |
21.00 |
| 7 |
SH |
38.00 |
| 8 |
LJ |
130.00 |
| 9 |
SK |
16.00 |
| 10 |
MK |
26.00 |
| 11 |
ML |
41.00 |
| 12 |
BM |
219.50 |
| 13 |
LO |
68.50 |
| 14 |
LP |
105.50 |
| 15 |
NS |
93.00 |
| 16 |
CS |
230.00 |
| 17 |
ST |
122.00 |
| 18 |
WW |
171.00 |
We are so thankful for this incredible group of people, the Echinacea Project would not be possible without their hard work and dedication!
Naomi began volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2014 after working as an elementary school teacher and office manager. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2014, Naomi has cleaned numerous Echinacea heads counted over 20,000 achenes! She appreciates the quiet lab work and the chance to learn about plant conservation. Outside of the lab, Naomi enjoys knitting, gardening, and spending time with her grandchildren.
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 teaching middle school science in New York, Lois moved to the Chicago area and began volunteering with the Chicago Botanic Garden. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2009, Lois (aka “the Achene Queen”) has counted over 430,000 achenes! Before teaching the United States, Lois received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach science in Burma and, after her stay in Burma, she traveled around the world writing for the Junior Scholastic Magazine. She has visited over 70 different countries!
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.
Following a career in finance, Kathryn decided to pursue her long-time interest in gardening and began volunteering with the Chicago Botanic Garden. She started working in the outdoor gardens but soon switched to the research department in hopes of learning more about plants and plant science. Since joining the Echinacea Project in 2008, Kathryn has become a jack of all trades. She helps clean Echinacea heads and has counted over 150,000 achenes! Kathryn’s favorite pastimes are gardening and knitting.
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.
We arrived at the Botanic Garden on Monday and had a tour of the labs and a discussion with Stuart to introduce us to the Echinacea Project. We began our work by cleaning 82 Echinacea angustifolia heads, separating the top 30 achenes and the bottom 30 achenes. The rest of the achenes were labeled as mid or unknown (if we did not know the location the achenes came from). Once the top and bottom achenes were separated out, we affixed them to sheets in preparation to x-ray.
Graduate students and post docs shared information on their research and advice on graduate school options. Lynnaun introduced us to his graduate research involving fungus on orchid roots. Evelyn discussed her path to working at the Chicago Botanic Garden as a post doc researcher, including her PhD research on ferns and what type of work is available after getting a PhD. Rob shared his graduate research on the effect of buckthorn invasion in oak savannas on the ectomycorrhizal community. One evening after our work at the gardens, we attended a journal club for the graduate students who work in the labs at the Botanic Garden and attend Northwestern University. Jessa discussed with us her time spent after under-grad working in an arboretum and how that led to her involvement in graduate research here at the Botanic Garden.
Looking forward to next week!
– Emma and Jocelyn
Shortly after retiring from her career as a program manager with the National Opinion Research Center, Suzanne took a course on native prairie plants at the Chicago Botanic Garden and began volunteering at the Garden. She initially worked to restore the Garden’s prairies before joining the Echinacea Project in the early 2000s. In the lab, Suzanne is usually busy cleaning Echinacea heads or preparing achenes for weighing and X-raying. She enjoys gardening and volunteers with a bird rescue organization as well as the Butterfly Monitoring Network in her spare time.
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 investigates the role of three fundamental constraints on mate availability – temporal asynchrony, spatial isolation, and reproductive incompatibility – in remnant Echinacea angustifolia populations. During the summer of 2014, we conducted two studies related to The Mating Scene project. In the first study, we mapped 991 Echinacea plants and monitored the phenology of 1360 flowering heads across 31 remnants to quantify spatial isolation and flowering asynchrony. At the end of the season, we harvested 193 flowering heads from 25 remnants to assess seed set. In the second study, we performed 364 pollen crosses to characterize patterns of reproductive incompatibility within 10 remnants. With the data collected in 2014 and subsequent years, we aim to elucidate how the interactions between temporal asynchrony, spatial isolation, and reproductive incompatibility influence reproductive fitness in fragmented prairie remnants.
|
site |
# of flowering plants |
# of flowering heads |
# of crosses |
# of heads harvested |
| 1 |
aa |
60 |
83 |
36 |
5 |
| 2 |
alf |
63 |
78 |
|
6 |
| 3 |
btg |
3 |
3 |
|
2 |
| 4 |
dog |
1 |
2 |
|
|
| 5 |
eelr |
33 |
17 |
28 |
5 |
| 6 |
eri |
38 |
54 |
|
5 |
| 7 |
eth |
9 |
46 |
|
5 |
| 8 |
gc |
6 |
6 |
|
3 |
| 9 |
kj |
7 |
8 |
|
5 |
| 10 |
lce |
90 |
70 |
24 |
5 |
| 11 |
lcw |
51 |
95 |
24 |
5 |
| 12 |
lfe |
64 |
103 |
24 |
5 |
| 13 |
lfw |
89 |
57 |
24 |
6 |
| 14 |
ngc |
8 |
5 |
|
|
| 15 |
nnwlf |
2 |
13 |
|
5 |
| 16 |
nrrx |
20 |
25 |
|
5 |
| 17 |
nwlf |
13 |
16 |
|
5 |
| 18 |
on27 |
92 |
96 |
42 |
5 |
| 19 |
ri |
82 |
112 |
44 |
5 |
| 20 |
rrx |
43 |
47 |
33 |
5 |
| 21 |
rrxdc |
3 |
3 |
|
2 |
| 22 |
sap |
29 |
13 |
|
5 |
| 23 |
sgc |
8 |
243 |
|
5 |
| 24 |
SppE |
92 |
81 |
41 |
42 |
| 25 |
SppW |
51 |
38 |
44 |
42 |
| 26 |
th |
8 |
9 |
|
5 |
| 27 |
tower |
7 |
11 |
|
5 |
| 28 |
waa |
4 |
8 |
|
|
| 29 |
wood |
4 |
4 |
|
|
| 30 |
yohE |
4 |
5 |
|
|
| 31 |
yohW |
7 |
9 |
|
|
Start year: 2014
Location: Phenology in 31 total remnants, compatibility in 10 remnants
Products: The phenology and compatibility datasets need to be made readyR. The harvested flowering heads are being processed at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Overlaps with: phenology in six remnants, fire and flowering at SPP
Description: The Echinacea Project’s recruitment experiment examines the germination and survival of Echinacea angustifolia seedlings in oldfields and restored grasslands under different fire regimes. In 2014, Team Echinacea searched for and measured Echinacea plants in 60 study plots spread across 10 experimental blocks. After data collection was complete, we mapped all newly flowering plants. The goal of this study is to identify the environmental factors that influence the recruitment of seedlings and the long-term fitness of Echinacea plants.
Start year: 2001
Location: 10 experimental blocks located in oldfields and restored grasslands
Products: Raw data taken on paper were entered into database and verified. Flowering plants with new tags were mapped and the spatial data is located in the 2014 SURV files. Flowering plants with old tags were not mapped in 2014.
Description: During the summer of 2014, Will Reed designed and executed an experiment to measure the efficacy of various pollen storage methods including storing pollen at room temperature, in refrigeration, and freeze-drying pollen. Between July 14 and August 8, he collected pollen from 15 different plants and performed a total of 186 hand pollinations on 50 plants. These results will improve pollen storage practices and expand the capability to cross plants that flower asynchronously or potentially in different years.
Start year: 2014
Location: P1
Products: A dataset and detailed methods are located in Will Reed’s Dropbox folder. Dataset needs to be made readyR.
We harvested the heads Will used as pollen recipients. He could remove the achenes to see if his crosses produced viable seeds.
Experimental plot 1 (P1) encompasses 11 different experiments originally planted with a total of 10673 Echinacea individuals. These experiments include long-term studies designed to compare the fitness of Echinacea from different remnant populations (“EA from remnants in P1”), examine the effects of inbreeding on plant fitness (“INB” and “INB2”), and explore other genetic properties of Echinacea such as trait heritability (“qGen”). In 2014, Team Echinacea measured plant traits for the 5409 Echinacea plants that remain alive and followed the daily phenology of 567 flowering heads. Echinacea began producing florets on July 1 and continued flowering in P1 until August 24. The data collected in 2014 will allow us to estimate the heritability of various traits and assess the lifetime fitness of plants from the numerous experiments.
|
Experiment |
Year planted |
# alive |
# flowering |
# planted |
| 1 |
1996 |
1996 |
314 |
115 |
650 |
| 2 |
1997 |
1997 |
270 |
57 |
600 |
| 3 |
1998 |
1998 |
32 |
3 |
375 |
| 4 |
1999 |
1999 |
542 |
106 |
888 |
| 5 |
1999S |
1999 |
297 |
37 |
418 |
| 6 |
SPP |
2001 |
318 |
14 |
797 |
| 7 |
Inbreeding |
2001 |
221 |
15 |
557 |
| 8 |
2001 |
2001 |
170 |
11 |
350 |
| 9 |
Monica 2003 |
2003 |
28 |
3 |
100 |
| 10 |
qGen |
2003 |
2501 |
122 |
4468 |
| 11 |
INB2 |
2006 |
716 |
41 |
1470 |
Start year: 1996
Location: experimental plot 1
Products:
Overlaps with: aphid addition exclusion, Pamela’s functional traits, pollen longevity, pollen addition exclusion
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