Lea Richardson died on Friday April 3rd due to complications from melanoma. She was surrounded by friends and family in a hospital in California.
Lea joined Team Echinacea in June 2015 when she participated in a Research Experience for Teachers internship at our field site in Minnesota. It was a bold move for a teacher from Los Angeles public schools to try out research in rural Minnesota. She loved working with the team and developed a passion for fieldwork. She also relished fun times like swimming at the lake after work and adventures with the team. Lea liked it so much she stayed longer than she planned that summer and returned the next summer.
Lea joined the Ph.D. program in Plant Biology and Conservation at Northwestern University and conducted research at our field site in Minnesota. Lea was a valued member of the department and looked out for those excluded from opportunities and advancement in science. She was a stellar student earning many academic honors.
Lea was an accomplished teacher and believed in the power of education to empower students—especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition to classroom teaching, Lea engaged students from diverse backgrounds in her research and conservation activities in the field and in the lab. She modeled a growth mindset in formal and informal settings.
Lea enjoyed facing the many challenges (physical, intellectual, and logistical) of conducting ecological research. Lea’s dissertation made substantial contributions to basic science and to conservation. She used multi-year experiments to investigate how prescribed fire and other disturbances affect the timing of flowering of prairie plant populations and their persistence in the face of environmental change. We are proud of Lea and of the good work she did for people, the prairie, and the planet. She made many diverse contributions through her work with Team Echinacea.
After her graduation Lea returned to California as a post-doctoral research fellow. Lea dedicated her substantial talents to science, mentoring, and conservation. She continued to collaborate with Team Echinacea on research papers and projects until she fell ill in spring 2025.
Team Echinacea gained so much from Lea. Lea will be missed.
Team Echinacea has been using discord for communication during the field season, for announcements, and for organizing. If you want to join our discord server, please contact Stuart. We’d love to hear from you.
For the past several years we have been investigating effects of prescribed fire on native ground-nesting bees in remnant prairies and restorations across our fragmented prairie landscape. We have a paper about effects of fire on the abundance and diversity of nesting bees in prep for a peer-reviewed journal. We are posting recommendations from this investigation now as a one-page non-technical document.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) and by the National Science Foundation.
For the past few years we have been studying effects of prescribed fire on pollination, pollinators, and plants across our fragmented prairie landscape. We have a paper about effects of fire on pollen that we are preparing to submit to a peer-reviewed journal. We are posting recommendations from this investigation now as a one-page non-technical document.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) and by the National Science Foundation.
For the past few years we have been studying effects of prescribed fire on pollination, pollinators, and plants across our fragmented prairie landscape. We have three papers we are preparing for submission to peer-reviewed journals. From each, we have recommendations for land managers interested in conserving native prairie bees and plants. We are posting these recommendations now in a one-page non-technical format.
The first paper is about prescribed fire effects on pollination and pollinator visitation. Read the recommendations that are based on the paper.
Expect two more one-pagers tomorrow.
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) and by the National Science Foundation.
The Echinacea Project flog has been silent since shutting down lab activities at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Even though lab work has ceased, other work has been progressing quietly. After Thanksgiving we will post updates.
I want to be in two places at once. I am shutting down & packing up my lab at Chicago Botanic Garden and wrapping up the field season in Minnesota. The lab’s been running for decades and there is a lot of stuff to pack. The annual harvest of Echinacea heads from experimental plots is also underway–this year the crop is big and it’s late due to late spring fires. Two big jobs in two distinct places. Thanks to everyone who is helping!
Due to technical issues I can’t be in two places at once. Please stop by the lab or field site and say hello or goodbye.
Team Echinacea has begun the annual census of Echinacea plants. Each year we census all flowering plants at over 30 prairie sites. Each plant gets a digital census record, a flag, and a tag. Most plants already have a tag, so we don’t give them a new one. But some have lost their tag or are flowering for the first time, so they need a new tag. New tags this year are numbered starting at 30,001. Plants get neon flags and we will come back and survey them so we can make a map of the location of every plant. Once they get surveyed, we replace the neon flag. All of these efforts help build a long-term dataset about the survival and reproduction of these very long-lived plants. These plants face many challenges living in small prairie patches, but they are tough.
Below is a summary of the number of census records taken so far at nine sites
site rawSite demo.id
1 other 1
2 alf around landfill 11
3 cg common garden 23
4 eelr east elk lake road 19
5 lfe landfill east 118
6 lfw landfill west 99
7 lce loeffler corner east 78
8 lcw loeffler corner west 81
9 rrxx railroad crossing 36
Amy Waananen’s just had a paper published in New Phytologist. She reports how the difference in flowering time of a plant’s two parents influences the plant’s fitness. Many researchers have investigated how differences in the location of parents (close or far) influences progeny fitness. Few, if any, have investigated how differences in flowering time affects progeny fitness.
Differences in flowering time are not as straightforward as differences in location. In space, parents can be far or close and we use distance to measure it. To state the obvious, negative distances do not makes sense. In time, parents can be far (asynchronous) or near (synchronous). But maternal plants can be earlier or later than paternal plants. This aspect of distance in time is fundamentally different than distance in space. Amy used positive and negative values to indicate which parent flowered earlier. Remarkably, this perspective really mattered to the fitness of progeny. Wow!
Amy’s discovery is really cool, it’s a surprise, and it’s a useful contribution to basic science. Amy also suggested some non-intuitive management strategies that can help promote plant fitness and resilience of populations in the face of changing environments.
Here’s the citation:
Waananen, A., Ison, J.L., Wagenius, S. and Shaw, R.G. 2025. The fitness effects of outcrossing distance depend on parental flowering phenology in fragmented populations of a tallgrass prairie forb. New Phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70240
Ian Roberts presented his thesis research “Impacts of Prescribed Fire and Land Use History on Ground Nesting Bees” at the Chicago Botanic Garden on April 30th. The presentation was well received by those attendees in the room and those who attended via zoom. After the public presentation, Ian successfully defend his Masters thesis for the program in Plant Biology and Conservation at NU. Congratulations, Ian!
Ian’s research advances our understanding of ground nesting bees, prescribed fires, and nesting habitat for bees in remnant and restored tallgrass prairie. Stay tuned for a publication and recommendations for land managers!
This is part of our project “How Do Prescribed Fires Affect Native Prairie Bees?”
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
