Woah! This week I decided to write a normal flog instead of continuing along the path of my patented Flvlog (video flogs). My Youtube channel was exploding with popularity and I just couldn’t handle the stress of posting a video this week, so I decided to record a tale of the return of a legend in pen and ink (well digital ink, technically). Anywho, here we are:
Today, on the 12th day of the 8th month in 2019, a Team Echinacea legend returned to the Hjelm house after a journey through the harrowing Rocky Mountains. If you are unaware of this individual, it is Will Reed, a 5-year Team Echinacea veteran. Will spent his last year in graduate school at University of Colorado Boulder working in the Rockies. He is currently studying soil moisture and plant phenotypic plasticity. We hope to hear more updates from Will on the flog soon!
With William in our arsenal, we started today off with some phenology (p1, p2, and remnant phenology; Will did #RemPhen today!). After we took phenology data, we took a hiatus from field work because it was raining. During this time, we got work done! A lot of us did some coding in R to process and set up data. Drake and I also met with Stuart to discuss our projects going forward! Will even got a chance to discuss Team Echinacea data things with Stuart. It was a productive rainy time! In the afternoon, we measured experimental plot 1. Will was very happy to measure again, even though many of the positions we found in p1 were staples. We did, however, finish measuring a lot of the inbreeding 2 experiment (which I am excited about, as it is the experiment I am doing my independent project on). At the end of the day, it was tough to see Will go. He will always be in my heart, but I truly just hope he can enjoy his research and continue down a successful career path.
Thanks for visiting, Will! I hope to see you soon 🙂
Will enjoyed reminiscing on his Team Echinacea days today. A great candid photo!
Hello flog, it’s good to see y’all again. Today, I decided to continue my flvlog Youtube series to account today’s activities. I hope you can enjoy my clownery!
Jay and I just after we finished measuring p6 today!I went down by the goat paddock today to do p1 99south phenology… Basal gave me a dirty look.
Hello flog readers! Today, I attempted my first ever flvlog… a flog, but in vlog form. I hope you can enjoy my wacky account of today’s events in my true native accent.
Here’s my “first” ever YouTube Video! It is a Vlog about our work today!Ren and I found an Echinacea right in the middle of a little bluestem bunch today… WOAH!The goats were calm until we started to move them…
Today was
a legendary day in the history of Team Echinacea. It was raining this morning
and we started late, but the weather fortunately cleared ub and the forecast
was combletely ubended for a nice, sunny, day! The day brought glory. We went
out to exberimental blot 2 this morning to take bhenology data and work on our
new bulse-steady bollination exberiment. All went well with Echinacea in B2,
and all was made astronomically better when the Wooster team found an Andrena
nest just outside of the blot! WOOHOO! This was truly a great moment in the history
of the Ison lab, as Jennifer’s goal of seeing an Andrena in its home was finally
combleted.
In the afternoon, we went out to B2 again to begin measuring the blot (we got nine rows done, but they had a TON of flowering heads). The Wooster crew dug ub the Andrena nest they found earlier in the day but were ultimately unable to find any cells that hold Andrena larvae. We did end a bit late, but it is safe to say that the skills we honed today in B2 are some we will be utilizing for the entire summer!
An Andrena mom walking into her nest!Leadplant (Amorpha canescens, my favorite plant) is starting to flower!
Hello flog
readers! Today was a special day for Team Echinacea in that we had the day off
for Independence Day! Stuart figured we were so productive the past week that
we deserved to spend some time on the beach instead of in the prairie. Thus,
the Town Hall crew (Myself, Amy, Drake, Julie, Erin, and Jay) joined the
Wagenius family at Elbow Lake to engage in 4th of July Festivities.
We were graced by the presence of Amy’s partner, Matthew Gullickson (a Gustavus
graduate just like me), Stuart’s parents Jean and Dwight, and Stuart’s brother
Peter and his family.
One of the
highlights of the day was participating in the Wagenius family tradition of
reading the Declaration of Independence. Although the Declaration is old and
has some rather questionable phrases by today’s standards, it was very cool to engage
with such a historical document with such a cool group of Americans. Following
the Declaration reading, we ate an ultra-chocolatey fudge-coated mega super picnic
lunch of fresh, homemade foods that was good for both the body and soul. In our
leisure time, many people swam, canoed, skipped rocks, or just sat in the sun (I
did that – I just sat in the sun). Nonetheless, the afternoon was filled with
interesting conversations and loads of laughs. At one point we discussed
starting a reality TV show for Town Hall… Here’s to hoping Stuart can write a
grant for that.
We work tomorrow, but I know for a fact that I feel refreshed and recharged to pound out a ton of high-quality and efficient field work tomorrow. Happy 4th!
The group reading the Declaration of IndependenceA nice view of Elbow Lake
Independent project proposal drafts were supposed to be due to Stuart by Saturday at 6AM. Unfortunately, I changed my mind what I wanted my project to be the Thursday night before the due date, so I had limited time to actually do the proposal. On Friday afternoon, I asked Stuart if he would like me turn in any other writing to him. Stuart asked for a Haiku, so here we are:
Echinacea plant A juxtaposition of science and beauty
Today was a rather chill day at Town Hall relative to other week nights. It is safe to say that everyone was rather tuckered out from the first week of field work. Fortunately, we did have some excitement in our day! The five of us currently at Town Hall (Myself, Amy, Michael, Erin, and Drake) decided to go out for dinner at Angelina’s in Alexandria. After that, we came back to the Hall and played with a local outdoor cat! It was super nice to us, but I didn’t touch it because I am allergic to cats. Coming inside, we all decided to get comfortable together. We all grabbed blankets (Michael grabbed his sleeping bag Snuggie) and sat around the living room reading books, reading papers, making tags, and making memes. As it turns out, Erin is a meme lord and is a skilled meme creator and photoshop artist. She once made a bird meme that was reposted by some famous ecology meme pages! I didn’t know that we had famous people on Team Echinacea this year! Nonetheless, today was a lazy, but slightly productive Saturday. I hope to have many more weekend days like this with the team!
Snuggle time! Michael had already gone to bed.Erin’s famous meme about cowbirds. They lay eggs in the nests of other birds. The cowbird is the one on the left.
My research interests include everything from community ecology to population and quantitative genetics and physiological ecology. That said, I love linking these different fields to plant conservation. I have found recently that I enjoy reading quantitative and population genetics papers the most that link their work ultimately to community dynamics. I recently completed my senior honors thesis at Gustavus with data from Team Echinacea’s hybrid experimental plot 7, and working with the data made me think of some interesting questions regarding the genetic structure of Echinacea angustifolia within the remnants.
Statement
I am from the wonderful suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. In my limited free time, I like to spend time with friends, play sports (softball, tennis, etc…), and play board games – especially cribbage. I also really love to be outside and go for walks, hikes, runs, and bike rides. I took a plant systematics course my final semester of college, so I have recently taken to naming every tree that I walk by when I am with friends. My final area of deep interest is competitive Pokémon battling; it really gets me to use my brain in new, creative ways, even if it is a children’s game.
This is me at school during a march for climate action (I’m the one with the sign)!
In summer 2018, we searched experimental plot 7 for Echinacea plants that are crosses between and within E. angustifolia and E. pallida. Of the 294 plants originally planted, we found 169. However, for the first time in the history of experimental plot 7, we found a flowering plant (an E. pallida x pallida cross)! The table below shows the counts of Echinacea plant in the summer of 2018. In addition to the lowest survivorship, the native E. angustifolia also has been the smallest (above-ground) over the five experimental years. Uh oh!
Riley with the first ever flowering head in exPt7!
Status 2018
ang x ang
ang x pal
pal x ang
pal x pal
not found
52
12
26
35
found
22
16
59
72
Start year: Crossing in 2012, Planting in 2013
Location: Hegg Lake Wildlife Management Area – Experimental Plot 7
Data collected:Rosette number, leaf number, length of longest leaf, herbivory for each plant collected electronically and exported to CGData. Recheck information for plants not found was also collected electronically and stored in CGData. In 2018, Riley also used a Li-Cor 6400 to analyze ecophysiological traits of Echinacea in expt7. This included photosynthetic rate and water use efficiency. Riley has this data and we’ll make it available after he’s done with his thesis.
Products: Riley’s 2018-19 Biology Honors Project at Gustavus. Riley found that within-species Echinacea angustifolia crosses have lower survivorship, above-ground biomass, and ecophysiological traits than other cross types. Riley made a poster, is writing his thesis, and will defend it in May.
You can read more about rexPt7, as well as links to prior flog entries mentioning the experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
Hello Echinacea folks! After a great summer at the Echinacea Project, I returned to Gustavus to work on the morphological and physiological data I collected at experimental plot 7. In my time at Gustavus so far, I wrote a proposal for my project so I can analyze my data and undertake a senior honors project under familiar Echinacea advisors Pamela Kittelson, Stuart Wagenius, and Sanjive Qazi. I have also worked on a methods section for my final honors paper and made a poster (attached below). In addition to my project, this fall I have been working on a project to implement composting and sustainable practices in Saint Peter restaurants and a project analyzing microRNA-mediated stress response in smooth cordgrass. The next steps for my honors project are to write up an introduction and do statistical analysis over our January-term. I will be performing aster and cluster analyses and am really excited to get back into some R coding! echinaceaPoster1_Thoen
