This week, Abby and I designed a poster, packed our bags, and headed to Minnesota to attend a science expo at Morris Area High School. The event was organized by Britney House (Team Echinacea RET 2022) and provided students of all grade levels an opportunity to explore different career paths and opportunities in science. There were folks with fancy robots and all the newest engineering tech in attendance, but we weren’t the only environmental sciencey group there; we were happy to see the MN DNR, USDA NRCS, and others in attendance.
Abby shows off our poster before the expo begins.
Our goals at the event were to inform people of our work in the area, get kids interested in conservation, and advertise our RET and RAHSS opportunities to local high school students and teachers. We got the opportunity to talk to lots of different people, from kids to community members to other exhibitors!
Wyatt sows seeds of conservation-mindedness in the youth. Future Echinacea Project members?
Many thanks to Britney and the rest of the crew at Morris for organizing such a great experience for students, the community, and orgs like us alike. After the event, we revisited some of our favorite spots around town before heading home the next morning. The jury has concluded that the prairie is just as pretty covered in a layer of snow, even if there’s not that much.
Forecasted snow turned up as rain in the Chicago area today. But this dreary morning was brightened by a delivery of crocheted Echinacea pens, courtesy of Hattie! Thank you for your craftsmanship!
Stuart presents Wyatt with a bouquet…
Old habits die hard. These are not for harvest, Wyatt!
You might think three weeks is too short a time to conduct research, but our 2023 Carleton College externs can prove you wrong! We just said goodbye to 4 undergraduate students who spent their winter break in our lab at Chicago Botanic Garden. During this time, they processed data, explored statistics, dove into the world of R, and learned more about the research objectives of the Echinacea Project. All of this contributed to their investigations into research questions of their own. The externs were also able to explore Chicago and the gardens, and connect with other scientists.
Rebecca and Vo worked with Jared to investigate effects of fire on reproduction in Andropogon gerardii. They developed methods for quantifying seed set in Andropogon, and put them into practice during the externship! Learn more about them and their research here and here!
Io worked with Abby and Wyatt to investigate vegetative and reproductive patterns in Echinacea Angustifolia. She was specifically interested in understanding how traits like basal leaf count and longest basal leaf length over time may influence reproductive effort. Read more about her project here.
Conlan worked with Abby and Wyatt to investigate structural reproductive traits and their relationship with pollination success. He wondered if taller head heights and larger head numbers led to higher pollination rates. Read more about what he found here!
There was some disagreement as to whether we were saying, “Echinacea” or “Andropogon” in our group picture this year. No matter- the photo still turned out nicely!
It was a pleasure to work with these 4 externs this year! We wish them the best!
I’m Rebecca Lerdau, a Junior at Carleton College. I’ve had a great time these past three weeks as a Carleton College extern at the Echinacea Project. I, and my classmate, Vo Dominguez were working with Jared Beck on the RemAg project looking at Andropogon gerardii’s (big bluestem) reproductive response to fire.
Having a good time counting the X-Ray images
A big part of our work has been with creating new protocols for determining Andropogon seed set. Previously, the main method for finding Andropogon seed set has been dissecting every floret, but this isn’t realistic on a large scale. Around half of Andropogon’s florets aren’t able to produce seeds, but it can be difficult to distinguish between the two types of florets. We wanted to figure out a way to use inflorescence mass to find total amounts of florets that can produce seeds. We were able to count awns and look at the relationship between awn count and mass. We found a beautifully linear relationship between awn count and seed mass (our R^2 = 0.96!) which allowed us to make an equation to use mass to determine the amount of fruiting florets. We set out to try X-raying Andropogon to determine seed counts. This was also successful, and we created a classification system for counting seeds with X-ray images.
We also got to try out our new seed set quantification system on some samples from the pilot RemAg experiment. We looked at the effects of burning on Andropogon seed set in 2022 from the pilot plots. While we were unable to find significant results with the data we were looking at, it was good to see that our protocols were working. The protocols are promising, and I look forward to seeing what happens with the larger RemAg project!
All in all, it’s been an awn-some experience working as an extern these past few weeks. I’ve learned so much. I’ve enjoyed getting to meet scientists and exploring CBG. We went on some lovely walks and got to see all sorts of cool plants. I had fun working with Andropogon and we even found a few seed predators! Thank you to Stuart, Jared, Wyatt, and Abby for this experience, and thank you to my fellow externs as well.
I am an aspiring botanist. I am specifically interested in ethnobotany/economic botany.
Statement
I am from Newton Grove, NC. In my spare time I like to read, listen to sad music, cook, and try/make new hot sauces
Projects
During my Fall ’23 externship, I processed wmSP and wmS0 heads to be used for Wyatt Mosiman‘s thesis. I used the resulting reproductive data from said heads with the corresponding plant measure data to assess the relationship between cumulative vegetative effort over 5 years (2018-2022) and reproductive effort and success in 2023. The path to my materials is: ~/Dropbox/ccExterns2023/ioHarris
I want to study biology and learn more about plant science.
Statement
I am from Houston, Texas.
In my spare time I like to play the trumpet and play games.
Echinacea Research Project
Introduction
The goal of my externship was a research project about Echinacea where I asked two questions and then conducted a study. The first question is does having taller head height increase pollination rates by insects in Echinacea. My second question is does having more heads increase or decrease pollination by insects in Echinacea.
Background
Echinacea is insect-pollinated mainly by bees and other studies I found have shown that in plants like C. behrii and V. thapsus taller heads are more likely to be pollinated because they are more visible to pollinators. Since we don’t know if head height plays a similar role in Echinacea I am conducting this study to see if there is any correlation between head height and pollination rates in Echinacea.
Another study I found saw more heads leading to greater pollination rates. However, Echinacea is self-incompatible, meaning it can not pollinate itself, unlike the plants in that study so its possible that if an insect stays at a single Echinacea plant with more heads instead of moving on to other plants it could actually hurt its pollination rate. This led me to my second research question to determine if there is a correlation between number of heads and pollination rates in echinacea.
Methods
I used data from a sample of about 229 heads that were put through a data collection process aimed at separated and analyzing the achenes in Echinacea heads. Achenes are the fruit that contain seeds in Echinacea heads so by analyzing if they contain seeds or not we can gather pollination data for this experiment. In the first step of the process we cleaned the heads for achenes. Then we rechecked our first count for accuracy and scanned the achenes into the computer for counting. Lastly, we randomized our achenes, separated them to be x-rayed, and classified them to see which achenes contained seeds giving us our pollination rates.
Question 1
After the data collection process the data was compiled into spreadsheets that were uploaded into R. I put the data on a scatterplot with head height vs pollination rate to create a regression line that had a positive correlation but was also very scattered. To see if that correlation was significant I conducted a linear regression analysis and found that it was significant so taller head height does seem to be related to higher pollination rates.
Question 2
I used boxplots to visualize this data with number of heads for an individual Echinacea plant vs average pollination rate and the pollination rate seems to go up as number of heads increase, the opposite of what I was expecting with self-incompatibility. I then conducted an ANOVA test and found that the difference in average pollination rate by number of heads was not significant so number of heads does not seem to have an effect on pollination rates.
Conclusion
My results gave a positive correlation between head height and pollination rate and no correlation between number of heads and average pollination rate. However, a big limitation to my study was the sample size, especially for question two. Only having one data point for the 5 and 7 heads categories could have a large effect on the data. Lastly, since this was an observational study we can only infer correlation not causation so someone conducting an actual experiment would be a good direction to go in the future.
Acknowledgements and Bibliography
Bibliography-
Dickson, C.R., Petit, S. Effect of individual height and labellum colour on the pollination of Caladenia (syn. Arachnorchis) behrii (Orchidaceae) in the northern Adelaide region, South Australia. Plant Syst. Evol. 262, 65–74 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-006-0472-3
LORTIE, Christopher J., and Lonnie W. AARSSEN. “The Advantage of Being Tall: Higher Flowers Receive More Pollen in Verbascum Thapsus L. (Scrophulariaceae).” Écoscience 6, no. 1 (1999): 68–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42901102.
Ohashi K, Yahara T. Effects of variation in flower number on pollinator visits in Cirsium purpuratum (Asteraceae). Am J Bot. 1998 Feb;85(2):219. PMID: 21684905.
Wagenius S, Lyon SP. Reproduction of Echinacea angustjfolia in fragmented prairie is pollen-limited but not pollinator-limited. Ecology. 2010 Mar;91(3):733-42. doi: 10.1890/08-1375.1. PMID: 20426332.
Thanks to Wyatt and Abby for helping me with data collection, Stuart for helping me develop ABTs and to the National Science Foundation for providing funding.
Materials that were used for my project can be found in the filepath: ~/Dropbox/ccExterns2023/conlanRamirez
For many, the end of the year brings thoughts of final exams, final reports, and final projects. Here at the Echinacea Project, we don’t believe in final anything, but we do believe in updates! Last week, two of our Lake Forest College interns, Sophia and Olivia, shared project updates with the lab: a culmination of their semester in the lab.
Olivia shared results from her study on plant and reproductive health indicators (more here)
Olivia and Sophia present research updates at lab meeting!
Sophia shared a poster with the lab and also with attendees of a Lake Forest College research symposium! Sophia’s research focuses on the effects of pollen limitation on life history fitness in Echinacea. (More info to come!)
Sophia Presents a poster at Lake Forest College’s Glassman Symposium.
I’ve had an amazing semester here in the Echinacea Lab, and today I presented my final update on my internship project. I was able to receive feedback on how to improve both my project and presentation skills. One of the suggestions I received was to add more background to my presentation, so here is some supplemental information to go along with the PowerPoint (attached below). I was working with the P01-nat batch for two consecutive years, 2021 and 2022. I was looking at the plant health indicators of number of basal leaves and length of the longest basal leaf from 2021 because plants receive energy through photosynthesis. My though process was that leaves that are longer and more abundant would lead to a greater ability of an individual plant to photosynthesize and therefore invest more energy in reproduction. I was looking at the reproductive effort and success in the following year, 2022, since Echinacea angustifolia are long-lived perennials. The individual plants that I was working with were originally planted in 1996, so they were pretty well established in the study sites in Minnesota.
I also received feedback on my experimental design, including changing my experimental design a little bit. My current study is phrased as causally linked factors but is more in line with exploring an association between basal leaves and reproductive effort and success rather than a causation. In order to explore more of a causal relationship, one of the suggested studies was to clip leaves so that there was a randomized manipulation on the plants instead of an observational study. Limiting the basal leaves of random plants could allow for a stronger causal relationship to be established between the two factors. A second suggestion to strengthen my current study was to include data from multiple years, since Echinacea angustifolia are long lived and potentially have certain years where reproductive effort spikes over their life cycle and doesn’t spike again, as is one of the potential implications in Sophia’s pollen limitation study.
My hypotheses were not supported by my data, but they still have implications for the further potential future study I mentioned above. The data I collected did not support my hypothesis because the p-values were too high, meaning the data was not statistically significant. I received a suggestion that I should investigate one plant seen in the total achene count graphs (slide 6 of my presentation) that had no basal leaves but produced 200 achenes in the following year. It is possible that this individual only had cauline leaves in 2021, in which case it wouldn’t be relevant to a correlation between basal leaves and reproductive output. Two directions for additional studies that I suggested were the relationship between plant height and reproductive output and overall reproductive fitness as it relates to the number of heads on a plant. The latter question is one that I was going to explore, but I chose to combine the data for my study so that each data point represented the plant as a whole.
I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to be a part of the Echinacea lab this fall. I learned a lot about working in a lab and data analysis using R. I want to give special thanks to Wyatt, Stuart, and Sophia for helping me with R and my project overall, and to all the volunteers and student workers who helped me count, classify, and randomize the 2022 P01-nat data.
Members of team Echinacea went back to Minnesota to do some final field work and winterization of our field station. We had fantastic weather for field work but northerly winds brought chilly temps by the end of the week and reminded us that winter is near . Here are some updates from all we got done these past few days!
Seed Add
We added seeds to 84 experimental transects at 36 sites for our seed addition experiment, which measures the effects of prescribed fire on seedling germination and emergence in Echinacea. We made quick work and were able to get this done in just 1 day plus an extra morning!
Here is Wyatt sprinkling E. angustifolia achenes along our seed addition transects.
Prescribed Burning and Broadcasting Seed
We got two solid days of good burn weather– more than any of us predicted! Over this window we burned six units, including the production plot, a few oak litter areas, Jean’s prairie garden, and the southeast hill. After all this burning, we broadcasted native seed collected by the team this summer. We’re excited to see what happens in these units next year!
Jean’s prairie garden burned in ~5 minutes
Jared gets our 1st burn started
Wyatt broadcasts seed into this freshly burned unit
Return Achenes to Remnants
Every summer we harvest a subset of Echinacea heads from remnant sites to assess fitness. In order to ensure that we are not disrupting these populations, we later return the achenes to their maternal plants in a way that mimics natural dispersal. On this trip, we visited many small sites, where this process is essential as well as a few bigger ones.
Woody Encroachment Pilot
I tested out methods for my research project looking at the effects of Sumac encroachment on Echinacea fitness and mortality. I collected height and spatial location information on Sumac plants in order to quantify encroachment. In an encroached site like Tower, this process was no walk in the park…
Here I am staking to one of my random points
Post- Summer Sleuthing
When mistakes during summer data collection happen, it takes some investigating to figure out where we went wrong. On this trip, we revisited plants with issues from demographic data collection AND we found a P02 plant that was never harvested during the summer!
This week I worked on randomizing and counting. Thanks to the help of the student workers and volunteers, there is only about a quarter of the P01-nat batch left to randomize. I am hopeful that I will be able to complete the randomizing by the end of next Tuesday.
Today I spent my day counting achenes from the scans that I completed earlier this month. The counting process takes place on the ACE website. Each individual scan requires three different people to count it, and then the average of those three counts is taken as the most accurate one. I am completing one of the three counts for the entire batch. The ACE website is very user friendly and straight forward. The images are counted in a random order to keep the process as accurate as possible. To begin counting, I click the “count achenes” button on the dashboard (Right of Image 1). The first thing I do for every new scan is to confirm that the file name matches the envelope displayed in the scan (Image 2). After I confirm the file name and letno, I click on each achene and a blue dot is overlayed on the image (On the right of Image 2). The software keeps track of how many achenes I have counted in the image. Once I have double checked that I have accounted for every achene, I click “submit count”. The website goes back to the dashboard, and I begin the process over again. As of the end of the day today, I am 55.68% done with counting P01-nat (On the bottom of Image 1). Many thanks to the volunteers for helping me reach this point!
Image 1. ACE dashboard Image 2. A scan after all achenes have been counted.
