daily update « The Echinacea Project

P1 Measuring Update – Day 2!

22% done, another effort made this morning with 4 pairs!

Yesterday, the team began measuring our biggest common garden experiment, P1! This plot has 10,992 positions that were planted with Echinacea. Yesterday, 3 teams of pairs went out for about 3.5 hours in the morning and knocked out 1,140 positions and 14 segments for over 10% of P1! I’m excited we made so much progress the first day! Below is map that visualizes progress. Stay tuned for today’s update.

Wheel of Good Fortune

Ritualistic randomizer

A machine of the organizer

Shake up the pairing

Instead of despairing

Stale routine? Revitalize her!

Hello Microhabitats, Good Morning P2, So Long Victoria

It was a busy morning here at the Station
I barely had time to comb through Victoria’s Donations
A little past 11 I drove her to Perkin’s
Where much to my sadness the Groom Shuttle was lurkin’
We will miss you, Victoria, a whole heck of a lot
More than all the plants missing in our P2 plot

Lonely visor seeks loving, careful, accurate data collector

Episode 0: Pilot

In this episode of a day we started off testing out Jared’s protocols for micro habitats. We gathered data like soil compaction, light availability and litter depth from random test points. We had lots of success and even more discoveries on how to make things run smoother. Tomorrow we will put the newly revised protocol to the test in the first official episode of micro habitats!

Hidey holes and hymenopteran houses

Grass so high
Our vision fails
Of flags off hiding
Who knows where

Holes for hiding
Insects who
Like their grasses
Tall and true

Today we helped dig soil cores for a “pitfall trap” project. The holes were dug near our ENRTF insect collection points and will grant greater insight on how burning prairies can affect insect population composition. The grass was pretty high, though, and we could hardly see the flags that had been placed earlier in the season! Rest assured, the holes were dug.

Also we did emergence traps. We always do emergence traps.

Also Daytona’s pockets are sweaty.

For Hire: Private Eyes

Today, we began flagging the always-elusive P8 common garden. Unlike our other experimental plots where individuals were planted as seedlings on a grid, P8 involves seeds that were sprinkled along a meter transect. This plot, which investigates the evolution potential of two remnant prairies (read more about the experiments in P8 here!), also has a transplanted remnant prairie smack-dab in the middle of it! Flagging this monster is no small feat.

I was lucky to be partnered with Blaire for this flagging quest and we were an unstoppable duo. Each meter transect is marked with a nail, and between the the two of us, we had a high success rate for nail unearthing. Oftentimes they were parallel with the ground or hidden by nail-like imposters (rocks) that we suspect Stuart may have planted to test our nail-finding abilities. Blaire dubbed us as “private eyes” and I said we were “human metal detectors”. If you’d like to hire us for your investigation needs, you can contact us through the flog.

A view of P8, not entirely finished flagging but almost there!

Hall of Flowers

Pollen

Scraped off of bees

But who did it come from?

Saving flowers to check which one

Matches!

—

Brimming

Vials full of

Orange, purples, yellows

Bottles glowing in a sunbeam

Dreamy

Moiduh in P6

This morning in P6, a murder occurred. The victim? A (likely) hybrid between Echinacea pallida and angustifolia. It flowered for the first time ever and Lindsey quickly decapitated it after taking data.

Top: Lindsey and her latest victim. Bottom: Echinacea angustillida (unofficially named). The pollen color is right in between that of a pallida and angustifolia plant.

Tree Hugger Era

Magical hobbit houses to old giants. Yesterday I got to join the REU interns for their field trip to The Morton Arboretum where I was able to learn and appreciate the different variety of trees in their exhibitions. It was interesting to see so many kinds of trees and also learn more about the endangered species and the reasons why they are currently endangered. Here is a picture of the spruce plot off in the distance. It is so majestic! Unfortunately, we were not able to get off the tram and wander into the spruce tree forest.

After the tram tour of the arboretum, we were able to get a tour of their lab space and learn more about the different ongoing projects. One of the REU interns there was studying traits of different urban trees in hopes of being able to determine what type of trees would thrive better in urban environments where there is a limit to resources, such as water and soil volume. In their herbarium, they had what one might call a spice rack but for plants and look what I found among their collection! Yes! Echinacea seeds!

This trip was very fulfilling and definitely worth the 4-hour round trip Metra ride!