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It’s great to think of the arrival of so many new Team Echinacea members in Douglas County today!! I’ve been glad to get to know Ilse in advance of the field season – she did a great job analyzing one of the long-accumulating Echinacea datasets, using aster analysis, a statistical approach for evaluating lifetime fitness from its underlying components of survival and fecundity. Charlie Geyer’s work to develop aster modeling was stimulated by our data on Echinacea. We have learned a lot about our remnant populations of Echinacea from the aster analyses we’ve completed over the last several years (see Resources page), and other analyses, in addition to Ilse’s, are in progress. Besides our regular use of aster modeling, it is now being used to study fitness in many other species.
I’m looking forward to seeing you all and working with you on Wednesday!
I was glad to participate in assessing floral phenology Wed morning and, with Amy, checking to resolve uncertainties remaining from this year’s monitoring of the first recruitment experiment (not to mention a very fun lunch with the team!). We sampled tissue from closely neighboring rosettes, where it isn’t clear whether they are the same or different plants, for eventual molecular analysis in Chicago by Jennifer and her team. Resolution of those plant identities should certainly help reduce the problem of counts of survivors *increasing* between censuses. But, in retrospect, I wondered whether the info we recorded was crystal-clear in terms of how this year’s counts should be adjusted, depending on the outcome of the IDing, particularly for the zones where many seedlings were recorded. When the remaining double-checking is done, it would be good to keep this in mind…
Of the many, many other terrific things that I’m excited are being accomplished, I’ll just comment that I’m happy to see Megan’s post that she has sampled pollen and stored it in different conditions to check its long-term viability. Finding a way to keep pollen viable for a month to a year would pave the way for experiments I thought up while observing pollinators out at LF on July 7. I see that Megan noted the amount of pollen available for that sample wasn’t large, so it would be great if another set of samples could be taken, also so other plants are represented.
I should introduce myself to the new Team – I’m Ruth Shaw. I’ve collaborated with Stuart and the Team on this project since 2000. I’m a professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. Broadly speaking, my research addresses questions about ongoing evolution in plant populations, and I have found this project on the evolutionary consequences of fragmentation of populations of Echinacea endlessly stimulating!
I’m just back from the joint meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, The American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biology, where I gave a brief talk about some of our results based on 7-years of data on “Inb1” an experiment to compare the effects of inbreeding and of crossing between remnants. This experiment has been growing in the common garden since 2000, and we have now documented that the degree of inbreeding depression is exceptional, far exceeding that found in other studies. Intriguingly, we have also found that both inbreds and progeny of between remnant crosses harbor more of the specialist aphid than plants derived by random mating within remnants.
A special highlight of the meeting is that our paper about estimating fitness, with examples (available via the main echinacea website), received the President’s Award, chosen by the current President of ASN as outstanding paper of 2008 in the journal, The American Naturalist. Quite an honor!
I was out in Douglas County in late May for the early monitoring of seedling recruitment in the remnants, and I’m glad to hear that process is moving forward well! I’m looking forward to getting back out there and working with you all soon!
Per requests, here’s the recipe:
1/2 c butter
1 c sugar
1 egg
1/3 c molasses
2.25 c flour
2 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
3/4 t cloves
3/4 t ginger
1/4 t salt
That’s it. Usual method – cream butter with sugar, add egg and molasses, then dry stuff. Recipe says bake at 375 for 10 min, but Thomas advises 350 for a little less time to keep them softer.
It was fun feasting on cookies – these, Julie’s and Jean’s – with you all on Thurs after our soaking morning!
Georgiana May and I had a great day working with Amy M., Gretel, Ian, Jennifer, Julie, Rachel and Stuart. Though we had specially chosen Thursday as having the most promising weather, it was raining when we arrived at 9, but that didn’t stop us from piling into the truck for the trip out to the beautiful prairie remnant at Krusemark’s where we relocated previous flowering plants and collected demographic data on them. The water resistant paper kept the maps from thoroughly shredding, and we finished the job – but not before 1. Back at the farmhouse, water had been restored (after a break the night before) AND there were 3! batches of cookies – great reward!! After lunch, Gretel and Jennifer visited several remnants to relocate seedlings we marked in May. Amy, Rachel, Georgiana and I did the same at E. Riley – it was satisfying to see even just a few survivors! Stuart, Julie and Ian surveyed at Riley and E. Riley. All this, under beautiful, warm sunshine – what a difference a few hours makes! Georgiana and I enjoyed a look at Staffanson and Hegg Lake on our way out back to the TC’s. It was a great summer working with all of you!! My best wishes to all of you. Ruth
At last, after car trouble aborted my trip last week, I made it back out to Douglas County to join in field work with Team Echinacea. What a difference from the 2 days in late May, when Stuart, Jennifer, Andrea, Amy Mueller, and I were there searching for seedlings in the remnants! On Wed, the team numbered 12, and we made great headway measuring plants in the common garden. We were undaunted by the heat and humidity, though we did welcome every breeze. Today, we had the benefit of clouds all morning, and 13 of us measured quite a few plants at the Hegg Lake experimental site before rain, which we’d been seeing in the distance all morning, chased us in for lunch. The weather canceled field work for the afternoon, but we received instruction from Rachel about the upcoming work to evaluate species composition at her research sites, and I conferred with Stuart on analysis of pollinator visitation data before I headed back to the Twin Cities. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet the new members of the crew and working with them and look forward to the next time.
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