This is going to be a joint flog post for Sunday and Monday (mostly Sunday…).
Sunday was a travel day for me. I woke up at 5:30 am and hopped on the Amtrak train in Dearborn, Michigan and headed back to Chicago, Illinois.
While on the train I worked on revisions for my Master’s thesis and worked on a poem while I drank my coffee.
Thank you Amtrak Employee for the coffee.
When I arrived in Chicago, I had two hours to kill before my next train. So, I grabbed lunch at Chipotle and hung out in the main hall of Chicago’s Union Station.
These statues at Chicago Union Station are supposed to represent Night and Day.
While on the train from Chicago to Minneapolis, Minnesota I worked on my Master’s thesis some more.
My Amtrak trek from Dearborn, MI to Minneapolis, MN.
When I arrived in Minneapolis I had to take the Green Line to Stuart’s brother’s house. This is where I left my car while I was out of town. So, here is a thank you to him and his family for that!
No tickets or tows There went my remaining woes I am so thankful
Finally arrived in Kensington, Minnesota around 1:15 am and in bed by 2 am.
Woke up Monday and got to work with Team Echinacea after my week away! We went out to Experimental Plot 2 and took phenology data and administered our pulse/steady pollination treatments.
Julie found a toad.
After work in P2 I went out to Riley and collected seeds.
Today, we were unfortunately rained out of some of our planned weekend fieldwork. Though we were hoping to do some more crosses for the pulse/steady pollination experiment, early morning rainstorms settled in before we could head out to P2, and they stayed through much of the day. Wet pollen is not the easiest to effectively swipe on styles, while rainy weather can also delay pollen presentation on anthers. Instead, Stuart decided to call off the day’s fieldwork, leaving the Town Hall crew to spend the morning inside and dry. While Erin, Jay, and I were puttering around Town Hall enjoying the sounds of raindrops on the windows, Amy and Riley were making their way back from their own weekend excursions further south near the Twin Cities.
At least the sunny weather held out long enough for Erin, Jay, John, and Stuart to do a round of crosses on steady treatment plants yesterday, all while I collected the last of the style persistence data from my own interspecific crosses. I’m excited to start crunching the numbers and considering the results!
Wondering why this Echinacea head is so *colorful*? Each paint color in each row labels a different set of crossed florets, which received pollen from either Heliopsis helianthoides or Ratibida pinnata.
Just before the stormy weather set in, we also took the chance to enjoy a lovely weekend evening on the shore of Elk Lake.
Erin at Elk Lake, enjoying a sunset swing in her hammock
Today was a fun and productive day. This morning, I went to the NW remnant sites to monitor phenology. I also collected leaf tissue from some sneaky flowering plants that I’ve found since the last time I collected tissue in June. Meanwhile, Julie, Jay, Riley, Erin, and John headed out to P2 to monitor phenology, crosses for the pulse/steady experiment, assess crosses from Julie’s heterospecific crossing experiment, and measure the final rows of P2. Stuart joined them later in the morning and they completed measuring the plot! Wow!
Does Ratibida pollen induce style shriveling in Echinacea? Julie is finding out!
This afternoon the team split up into three teams: Jay and Julie formed Team “Kick Ash” for Jay’s experiment looking at different management treatments on ash. They described the experience as “walking on a treadmill of trees,” but made great progress in metaphorically kicking back the advance of ash in ExPt 8 by applying herbicide treatments to leaves of plants. Team “Smoking Plants” consisted of Riley and me. We went to a spot that is north of landfill, south of around landfill, and south-southeast of north of northwest of landfill to identify plants for an experiment looking at the effects of liquid smoke on flowering. We found 100 plants that were flowering this year, counted each plant’s number of rosettes, and shot a point at each plant so that we can revisit them later. This fall or spring we’ll apply different liquid smoke and mowing treatments to assess just what it is about fire that induces flowering in Echinacea. Stay tuned for when we actually smoke the plants this fall! Finally, Team “Seed Collection” collected seeds for Drake while he is away at a family reunion.
Riley gazes at south-southeast of north of northwest of landfill
We wrapped up the day with watermelon and very impressive, definitely NBA/WNBA-worthy tosses of watermelon rinds into a five gallon bucket. That’s all for now!
Breaking news from Team Echinacea East, back here in
Wooster, Ohio!
Upon returning to the lab this morning, the team was ready to begin work again after our trip to Minnesota. However, we were not prepared for the tragic scene that greeted us when we arrived. The Great Waluigi Wall of Williams Hall, constructed earlier this summer (a remembrance to our lab mate Mia while she was away in Arizona back in June), had vanished without a trace!
The scene of the crime!!The original Great Waluigi Wall, in all its glory
After taking a moment to grieve and process this traumatic event, the team regrouped to further assess the situation and get to the bottom of this heinous crime. We discovered that while The Great Waluigi Wall was gone, not all the Waluigis of the lab had disappeared. The five Waluigis spread throughout the lab appear to have been left unharmed, much to the team’s relief. But despite the team’s best and most valiant search efforts, the other Waluigis could not be located.
Some of the Waluigis spread throughout the lab, including this one on Martha Chase, have been spared.
As to the suspect of the crime, the team thought long and hard about who could possibly be motivated to such a terrible act. Here, we arrived at a heart-breaking conclusion. The only person who had been in the lab during our time in Minnesota and thus the only person with direct access to the Waluigis would have been Mia herself! However, while still lacking the evidence, this awful possibility cannot be confirmed for certain at present. Team members reached out to Mia for a comment on the situation but received no response. It even appears that our suspect has gone so far as to flee to Arizona, forcing the team members to consider this frightening possibility.
Ren investigates the lab for any traces of the missing Waluigis
In the meantime, if anyone has any information as to the
location of the Waluigis, please contact Ren, Miyauna, or me at Team Echinacea
East. A memorial service for The Great Waluigi Wall will be held on 26 July
2019 at 4:00PM (EST) in Ruth Williams Hall.
This is our stand in team member George H.W. Bush who helped us with phenology today.
Team Echinacea was feeling a little small today with 7 people, but we took advantage of the beautiful weather and got a lot done! In the morning we took phenolgy data and worked on a pollination experiment. In the afternoon, Julie and I worked on our personal projects and the rest of the team went out to take demography data in the remnant plots.
Today’s flog is a bittersweet one, as it marks Team
Echinacea East’s last update from here in Minnesota. After what has been a
wonderful field experience with some truly amazing people, Miyauna, Ren, and I
begin our journey home to the great state of Ohio tomorrow. Though we are sad
to be leaving, we have had some great times while we’ve been out here, including
times from our last day of field work!
We started the day off by making the drive out to P2 to tackle some more measuring and make some more progress on the pulse/steady experiment. Though we had been making steady progress through the measuring, the team really surged ahead today, and now are over halfway done!
All smiles for P2 measuring!!
After wrapping up with the morning tasks, the team trekked back to Hjelm House for lunch, where we were joined with a few special guests – Stuart’s parents and Steve Ellis (a local beekeeper) and his wife, Karen. Steve gave a talk about his experience raising honeybees, how his bees have been affected by neonicotinoids, and his experiences going up against the state and federal governments to get them to restrict/ban the use of these harmful chemicals. Though we usually focus on our own native solitary bees here at the Echinacea Project, I think we all found it well worthwhile to take this short break to discuss the nonnative honeybee and the plight of pollinators all across the world.
We love bees! (and Stuart’s world-famous cake!)
After the conclusion of Steve’s talk and a brief flossing tutorial by Ren, the team prepped to head back out for the afternoon. This mostly included people working on their independent projects – Julie checking her crossed plants, Jay killing some more ash, and Riley and Erin honing their computer wizardry skills a bit more. Miyauna, Ren, Amy, and I were in for a special treat though, as we got to ride with John in the famous Bombus Mobile to go water the baby plants in John’s restoration plots at the school.
Bombus Mobile selfies!
And that was it! Our final day of field work concluded. It’s been a terrific two and a half weeks, and we wish the team all the luck in the world with the rest of their field season – we will miss you all!
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.
https://youtu.be/7sattQq5-4k
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’s flog will address a serious illness taking over the occupants of Town Hall. Mad Snail Disease (MSD) has been introduced to members of the Echinacea Project through direct contact with Avery Pearson, who carried the disease to Minnesota from her home in Ohio.
Those infected by the debilitating disease appear to be unable to make rational decisions and have been seen getting up to all kinds of shenanigans.
We hope for the speedy recovery of these individuals who have been infected. Sadly, there is no treatment for Mad Snail Disease; prevention is the only cure. If you are experiencing MSD-like symptoms, do not hesitate to talk to your doctor.
This has been a public health report by Ren Johnson.
Town Hall woke up bright and early this Saturday– or at least those of us left, since four of us are traveling this weekend! We had intended to perform the steady treatment in the pulse-steady pollination experiment before it got too hot and the bees beat us to all the pollen, but the end of yesterday’s thunderstorm system was still rolling through Kensington and we decided to wait it out. After the rain let up we finally arrived at the plot but found neither pollen nor pollinators. We futilely scraped wet pollen out of anthers until deciding to return when the sun came out.
A little over an hour later it had become a gorgeous day, and we were greeted by insects of all kinds.
A ladybug trundles around a finished flowering head
Unfortunately the heavy rains and the cold front seem to have scrambled pollen production. The heads we bagged to harvest pollen from didn’t show signs of presenting pollen any time soon, and heads in P2 were lucky to have one or two anthers with pollen on them. We collected what data we could, but decided to hold off on pollination until tomorrow. Our expedition wasn’t for naught, however, because Miyauna found an Andrena nest!
Miyauna models with the bee hole she spotted a fluorescent-dyed female scrambling into!
We bagged a few more heads in the area around P2 so that tomorrow we’ll be able to harvest plenty of pollen. Though Miyauna found a tiny bee nest with ease, she was briefly puzzled when Avery disappeared into the prairie.
Miyauna briefly considers fluorescent dying Avery to keep track of herRen lends a helping eye and admires the beautiful weather
With Avery located, we headed back to Town Hall to nap and putter around doing chores. We celebrated the bee hole discovery by voyaging out to the DQ in Starbuck, which has the most charming signage and most savage mosquito population of any ice cream joint we’ve visited.
The employees took money and returned change with lightning speed to avoid inviting the bloodsuckers beyond their sliding window
I’m writing from Sacramento, CA, where I am staying for the 2019 International Pollinator Conference at UC Davis. Today I heard talks about new quantitative methods for studying pollinator ecology and I also learned a whole bunch about pollinator disease ecology. Tomorrow will be full of more pollinator-themed talks and I will present my poster in the afternoon. I’ll post a copy of my poster below. I’m looking forward to learning more tomorrow! That’s all for now,
