Kate Gallagher « The Echinacea Project

July 2nd: Data for new labels

For creating new labels:
KG_newLabelData_02July.csv

KG_Purchased Seed EnvelopesWS.csv

Plug Datasheet_D-A_02July2010.csv

For verifying status of plugs:
Plug Datasheet_Verification_02July2010.xls

July 1st Update

Well, it’s been almost 2 weeks since my last post. How time flies.

Accomplishments:

Friday the 25th my seed envelopes (of remnant and restoration plants) arrived all sorted from IL. Thanks to my father and all the volunteers for working so hard to get that all done! Great job!

We finished measuring the first 9 trays of my seed plugs. I think almost eveyone in the team has been helping with this, so my thanks are profuse to you all.

Laura and I have been working hard to sort all of the purchased seeds into coin envelopes. (30 envelops for each species and source (3 species/3 sources) = 270 envelopes; 20 seeds per envelope = 5,400 seeds).

Laura and I have also been working on her project together. It’s a lot of fun to visit her remnant sites and see how the floral neighborhoods change over time. Her data’s going to be very exciting!

Early this week I was given verbal permission to plant my 10×10 meter plots of seeds and plugs at Hegg Lake, Runestone Park, and Bob Mahoney’s. I will hopefully have all the paperwork done soon for that!

I’ve spent some time working on FNC and pollinator data, but not nearly enough. Hopefully, I’ll be able to devote more time to it soon, especially because I have less than 3 weeks to finish putting together my poster! Eeep!

To Do:
The big goal is to get my plants in the ground ASAP! To that end:

Today, Laura and I will be marking out my plots.

We need to finish measuring the 2nd group of 9 flats. It’s particularly important to get the Alive/Dead status for each plug, so I can plan for next week. I hope I can wrangle up more volunteers here, although I know everyone is working hard on their own projects. (Btw, special shout out to Lauren and Hillery who’ve been helping a lot with this!)

I need to assemble my data to create new envelope labels with the location information for the plots, I’m hoping to get that done and and envelopes labeled by the end of the weekend.

News:
Parents are arriving today for a 4th of July visit! Hopefully they’ll get here in time to enjoy burger night at the K-town bar and grill, but if not they can meet everyone Friday morning.

We will be exploring Starbuck Heritage Days on Saturday (people are free to join us). There will be fireworks at 10 pm.

Some pictures from the weeks news:

Well, I was the last to arrive this summer, same as last summer. With the help of my lovely parents I was able to pack all of my plug trays (18) into my 2007 New Beetle. I have attached pictures of this amazing feet.

After a 9hr drive, I arrived in Kensington and finally met the rest of the group. We have a great team this summer, so that makes everything better.

Unlike last summer, I got to enjoy Runestone days in Kensington this year, which was very fun. We watched the parade, and I think it was the longest parade I’ve ever witnessed, which is ironic because Kensington is the smallest town I’ve ever lived in for any period of time. I think other floggers will be posting parade pictures, but I would just like to note that the giant Norse ship with the mini-vikings inside (i.e. kids dressed as vikings, shiny swords and all) was my favorite part.

Anyway, today is Monday, so back to the grindstone. To do:
1) Seed sorting. (I know the many CBG volunteers are helping to sort seeds for me back in Chicago. I will be doing my share here in the evenings.)
2) Measuring plants. Hopefully I can find a partner or two to work on this with me.
3) Organize my planting locations and get them ready to go.

Other work:
4) FNC ordination (still working on this)
5) Work on style persistence data
6) Call Amanda and chat about the “little aster” issue…

Well that should keep me busy. Attached are some pictures and last years Cookbook.
Ech2009Cookbook.doc

-Kate

How many do you see?

Hey All,
Long time no post, I know. Things certainly have been busy around here. As you all probably know, I finished making slides a while back – 372 slides total. WooHoo!!

Now, onto the next step, taking pictures of these slides. I took my very first pictures today, just a couple to get the hang of things, they are attached to this post. From my fiddling around today, I can see that this is going to be a lot more work than I thought. First off, the pollen is hard to find, it’s not all at the same level of view, some of them are on top of the stigma and then they’re really hard to see. Also, it’s challenging to focus in enough to where I can ID pollen grains. Stuart suggested working on a random sample of my slides for the rest of the summer, and completing them this fall at the CBG. The only issue there is the change of machinery, but hopefully we can figure something out.

As for the rest, I think I’ll be taking 1-2 shots of the entire style, and labeling them thus: stylevialID_site_date/time_A# – so A1, A2, etc. Then I’ll zoom in and proceed to take pictures at sites B through F on the style, and for each change in focus will be another number. The question is whether I should attempt to get a good sense of the exact number of pollen grains on the stigmas or try to ID the pollen types. I’d like to be able to do both, but I think for this summer at least, I’ll try to get a handle on the former rather than deal with the later.

On that note, Caroline suggested using a clicker to count the number of pollen in a picture, and that seems like an excellent suggestion. Does anyone know if we’ve got one?

Anyway, enjoy the pictures that I took so far:

-Kate Monster

pollen load progress

Listen up, Echinacea fans!

I’ve now finished making slides and taking photos of the first 68 insect visitors–only 107 left to go.

Here are some photos of the process:

1) Here is an insect carrying LOADS of pollen (haha! get it?) which I am about to transfer onto a small agar cube on a microscope slide.

2) I heat the slide, complete with pollen-covered agar cube and cover slip, on a hotplate. Next I throw the completed, labeled slide under the microscope camera and take photos like these:

3) I’ve pinned each specimen with a unique ID code that corresponds to its vial ID number.

The most common genera near as I can tell from the reference collection are…

Male Melissodes sp.

And Ceratina sp.

Please leave questions or comments and I’ll do my best to respond!

-Amanda

So many styles, so little time

So, I’ve been working hard creating slides from all the styles everyone helped to collect (thanks!), and this is the protocol I’ve been using:

II. SLIDE PROTOCOL:
A. ORGANIZE THE STYLE VIALS BY SITE
B. CREATE SLIDE LABELS
C. RANDOMIZE THE STYLE INFORMATION ON EXCEL
D. CREATE THE SLIDES IN THE RANDOM ORDER GIVEN BY EXCEL
1. Place the blank slide on a clean surface
2. Pull out the correct vial, open carefully (sometimes the styles are on the lid of the vial), use clean tweezers to remove the contents. Place vial contents onto the slide.
3. Remove any anther parts from the slide; organize the stigmas so they are separate/easily differentiated from each other.
4. Place one drop of glycerin on top of the stigmas. If there are any bubbles, try to move them away from the stigmas.
5. Place a cover slip carefully over the glycerin and allow it to settle.
6. Use mounting medium to seal the cover slip to the slide. Allow the slide to dry on a flat surface for 24-48 hours.
E. Put completed slides into slide boxes.

Of the approximately 380 slides I started with, I have 150 left to do, so I’m more than 1/2 way there. Once I’ve created all these slides, I’ll start taking photos and uploading pictures.

Anyway, just felt like it was about time I updated. Gonna go make slides now… ^_^

For next week

Hey everyone,

Thanks again for collecting helping with style collection, so far I’ve made four slides and the results are certainly interesting. There is certainly more pollen from 8am to 11am, but it’s going to be hard to tell what pollen is there. So far, I haven’t seen any thistle pollen, which is purplish, or any football shaped pollen, only a Echinacea and/or “-opsis” pollen (Heliopsis or Coriopsis). But then, my current sample size is tiny, so this may change. I have a lot more slides to produce, but so far so good!

FOR NEXT WEEK:

The protocol for style collection next week is a bit different, so please read this and take any notes that you feel are necessary, or ask me any questions you might have.

We will only be collecting styles at the end of the observation period. ONLY COLLECT STYLES ONCE!

Prior to taking the style off the plant, we will be recording style persistence data, to recap:
The form will have five new lines for you to fill out, fr1, fr2, mr1, mr2, and immatures.

Fr1 will be the lower row of unshriveled styles. Count a row if there are more that 3/4 of the styles left.

Fr2 will be the upper row (ie the most recent) row of unshriveled styles.

Mr1 will be the first row of male anthers

Mr2 will be the last row of male anthers (usually there will not be a mr2, so leave this blank)

Immatures is the number of rows or florets left (put an “r” or an “f” to indicate which). Only count florets if there are 11 or less. Only do this if head is at the end of flowering.

One last thing, if there is still a problem with recording the letter field, enter the tag number of the plant in that space and enter the flag letter in the notes (if there is no tag, put a zero). There shouldn’t be a problem, but if there is, just try to capture the information requested in the notes section.

Thanks again for your help and your patience!

-Kate Monster

For Tomorrow

The Protocol for Style collection tomorrow is a bit different, so, everyone needs to get to the farm at 7:15 so we can go over it! But let me give you a quick overview of the main points:

• We will only be collecting styles at the end of the observation period. ONLY COLLECT STYLES ONCE!
• Prior to taking the style off the plant, we will be recording style persistence data:
o The form will have five new lines for you to fill out: fr1, fr2, mr1, mr2, and immatures:
ß Fr1 will be the first row of unshriveled styles. Count a row if there are any left at all.
ß Fr2 will be the last row (ie the most recent) row of unshriveled styles.
ß Mr1 will be the first row of male anthers
ß Mr2 will be the last row of male anthers (usually mr1 and mr2 are the same thing, ie the same row so just fill in the same number twice if this is the case)
ß Immatures is the number of rows with immature florets left, or if the number is less than 11 total (for the whole head), put that number down.
We’ll go over this quickly tomorrow so everyone can get the idea.
• One last thing, if there is still a problem with recording the letter field, enter the tag number of the plant in that space and enter the flag letter in the notes (if there is no tag, put a zero). There shouldn’t be a problem, but if there is, just try to capture the information requested in the notes section.

Thanks again for your help and your patience!

-Kate Monster

As Promised

As promised, you can read the protocol I’ve developed for collecting pollen styles from Echinacea plants. This protocol will be joined with Mimi and Amanda’s to form one complete and very awesome experiment. You can find my protocol here:
Kate’s Proposal_1.doc

Input welcome!

-Kate

It’s so Exciting!

Hey Everyone,

I’ve finally made it to the flog. So excited. ^_^

For all our loyal followers, my name is Kate and I’ll be starting the Masters program at Northwestern in the fall. Thus, part of my energy this summer will be devoted to thinking/researching/exploring possible masters projects. Stuart, Caroline, and Megan have already been very helpful in setting me on the right track; they all have some great ideas and thoughts on what I could focus on. I’m feeling a bit spoiled for choice, actually. Guess I have a lot of reading to do!

I will also be working with the Pollinator Sub-team of the Echinacea Team. Allegra, Amanda, Mimi and I will all be tackling various aspects of the great pollen issues surrounding Echinacea. The questions I will be attempting to shed light on include:
1) What pollen ends up on flowering Echinacea? In what quantities?
2) Is a plants floral neighborhood reflected by the pollen that ends up on the flower?
3) How does isolation impact the amount of pollen on Echinacea plants? How does the quantity/quality issue play out on isolated Echinacea vs. Bunched plants?
4) Does flowering early or late in the season have any impact on the amount of pollen a Echinacea receives?

I’ll be posting a proposal type document with my methods soon, so watch for that.

Ta for now,
Kate

Categories

Experiments

July 2nd: Data for new labels

July 1st Update

Finally Reached Minnesota