This week we’ve continued working towards generating achene data from the Pulse-Steady experiment. It takes time, and care is needed every step of the way to make sure the final product is something we can learn something from! Besides this, we’ve had time for research and thinking about our independent projects. I’m investigating whether there’s a difference in Echinacea offspring success when parent plants come from the same population or different populations, Jack’s working on whether climate factors like rainfall and temperature affect Echinacea flowering phenology, and Eli’s studying pollinator data from experimental plots to determine if any patterns in pollinator populations emerge.
Now we’re all reaching the “data analysis in R” step, which none of us are extremely familiar with, so we’ll be learning a lot about the kinds of questions we can ask and answer with this tool. Erin, Riley, and Stuart have been super helpful in leading us through the research process, and the last two weeks as a whole have been really informative for me on the ins and outs of scientific research and working in a plant ecology lab.
Finally, I can tell the Plant Sciences building at the CBG would be a good place to work based on the office holiday party we got to go to yesterday. From the potluck aspect to the trivia, everyone put in a lot of effort and it’s always a good time when there’s a game of White Elephant involved (I brought a box of Echinacea Plus tea and got a funky clock made out of shells in exchange! That will go great in my dorm room)!
It has been a busy week! Over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday we finished scanning the achenes from the pulse-steady experiment using this fancy board to separate the achenes into their correct categories.
Erin made this to separate achenes when scanning
Yesterday Stuart gave us an introduction into using the X-Ray machine, which we hope to use in the near future on the pulse-steady achenes!
Yesterday was also the building-wide holiday potluck. We enjoyed lots of delicious food and had fun in the department-themed trivia. Our table ran away from the competition and decisively won the trivia trophy!
Our boot trophy from trivia!
We are busy working on our individual projects, beginning to look at data and doing lots of background research.
Today was a very busy day at the Plant Science Center!
We started the day rechecking our echinacea heads, to make sure we had picked out and counted every achene. Soon after, we had a meeting with Leah, who presented her research paper outline on the comparative success of a number of prairie plants in relation to burnings. It was very interesting to think about the restorative nature that fire can play in these ecosystems, and we spent a lot of time discussing her methods of presenting data as well.
Leah discussing her paper outline
Next up, we heard from Fabiany about his work in conifer fossils, their evolutionary significance as well as how they connected to his home country of Columbia.
One of the plant fossils that Fabiany passed around to the audience
Before lunch, we went through training and began working on classifying achenes through X-ray scans. After lunch, we brainstormed ideas for our individual (or group) projects that we’ll be focusing on for the next two weeks. We all have a lot of different areas of interest, from the impact of inbreeding to limiting factors on plant growth to flowering based on climate change. In addition, we all plan to work on our data processing/analysis skills through learning “R” and more. We spent the rest of the day doing some background research on our project ideas and more discussion of the scope and general plan for our projects.
Overall, it’s been a productive day! We are excited to hit the ground running next week on our projects.
The sun’s going down at the CBG, and Jack, Eli, and I are wrapping up sorting the Echinacea heads for Pulse-Steady! We’ve been pretty focused on it the last few days, with some breaks for learning about the project and meeting people around the lab. Erin, Riley, and Stuart have been good about showing us the ropes and giving us chances to get exposed to what’s going on with Echinacea project and other researchers in the building. Earlier in the week we got to meet a volunteer who sets pollinators (mostly different types of bees) to send to the University of Minnesota for identification, which was really cool. We’re also working on ideas for small independent projects we get the chance to do, and we’re looking forward to tomorrow’s lab meeting where we’ll get to participate in a discussion of a CBG scientist’s research paper in progress, focusing on the effects of fire on the reproductive success of several different prairie plants. It’s been cool to see the lab side of prairie research so far, and to be exposed to so many people studying it! And now that cleaning heads is wrapping up, I’m excited to see what we do next in the process.
Above: an Echinacea head before being taken apart very carefully! We’ve all been able to get into some music/podcasts while cleaning seedheads, so here are some recs––Emma: I’ve been listening to some podcasts––mainly Nancy and a new season of Limetown; Jack: Drilled, a true-crime podcast; Eli: some Radiolab podcasts and Earl Sweatshirt.
The first three days of our time here have been great! We’ve been oriented with everything in the lab, and most of the building. On Monday we went out to lunch at the garden cafe with Riley, Erin, and Stuart. The walk over there let us see some awesome parts of the garden, and Stuart shared with us some cool history about the garden. The last two days have been filled with lots of Echinacea head cleaning by counting and sorting achenes for the Pulse Steady experiment. This process is a bit time consuming, but quite satisfying once finished!
Setup for cleaning Echinacea heads- sorting and counting achenes
This morning Erin and Riley showed us and talked about the many experiments occurring at experimental plots P1 and P2 all of which are quite interesting! These experiments may end up guiding some of our individual research in the coming weeks.
The rest of the week holds more head cleaning, maybe beginning to X-Ray the achenes, some discussion about research ideas, and attending a lab meeting and seminar on Friday!
My name is Eli Arbogast and I am a sophomore at Carleton College. I am a potential (more and more likely) Bio major and am very excited to be joining the Echinacea Project. I want to study biology with a focus on ecology, environmental systems, and plant science, so this externship is the perfect opportunity for me. Past research/environmental-focused internships have included rebuilding trails in the Rockies, measuring agricultural impacts on water quality in rural Costa Rica and working on outreach/fundraising for wild salmon in Alaska. I have a foundation for my environmental interests as a result of being raised on an organic blueberry farm and being a beekeeper (albeit very much a beginner).
Outside of the lab, I am a big music person (playing and listening), love hiking, climbing, and most outdoor activities. I am big into exercise, like to read confusing books, mess around with computers, and play video games when I can find the time.
I’m very excited and grateful to be working on this project this winter, and I look forward to learning a lot!
Hello! My name is Jack Schill and I’m a junior at Carleton College. I’m excited to be part of Team Echinacea for the next three weeks as a research extern. I am an Environmental Studies major at Carleton, and I am very interested in many aspects of environmental science so I don’t really know exactly what I want to explore going forward in my education. However, I have really enjoyed and learned a lot from the ecology courses I have taken so far, so I’m hoping this will build on those interests! Furthermore, by growing up and going to school in the upper midwest (I grew up in Milwaukee, WI) I have a special interest in prairies and prairie restoration. I also hope my time here will allow me to meet a lot of interesting people doing cool work, and understand how people got to this position to maybe try to help me figure out what areas of environmental science I want to explore!
In my free time at Carleton, I’m on the varsity soccer team, I’m a member on climbing staff at the rock wall, I’m an active member of the ski club, and I enjoy doing crosswords. Away from Carleton, I enjoy spending time with family, and skiing as much as possible. I’m really excited for the next few weeks to work with Team Echinacea!
Hi! I’m Emma Greenlee, a junior biology major at Carleton College, here with the Echinacea Project as part of Carleton’s winter break externship program. I’m interested in ecology, conservation, and I’m excited to learn more about prairie research at the Chicago Botanic Garden the next few weeks, where I’ll be helping with a pollination experiment and conducting a small project of my own! I grew up in Aurora, MN on the Iron Range in a more forested part of the state, but I’ve come to love the prairies of southern MN and the Dakotas as I’ve attended Carleton and through summer jobs with The Nature Conservancy and at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve. I love fieldwork, but I’m excited to round out my understanding of prairie ecology and research by working with the Echinacea Project this winter!
At Carleton I’m on the cross country and track teams, and I’m hoping to minor in Spanish. I like reading, and love spending time outside and exploring in nature or in the city. I’m looking forward to spending time in a new city, learning from grad students and scientists, and exploring the lab side of prairie research the next few weeks!
Jay Fordham gave a presentation on his research about Fraxinus pennsylvanica (green ash) management that he conducted for his summer 2019 REU project. He presented at the 2019 Midstates Undergraduate Research Symposium in St. Louis on November 1-2.
Friday was a fun day in the lab! After the morning lab
meeting, where Erin presented her study proposal on quantifying the correlation
between Echinacea spatial isolation and flowering intervals, I continued weighing
biomass samples. I was able to get through about half the Day 3 samples and I
am hopeful I will be able to finish the rest by November 14th.
Half of the Day 3 samples
I brought a few friends along to the lab today from Goose Lake Prairie down in Morris, IL. A small spider I found nuzzled in a Grey Dogwood branch and a rather sizable praying mantis who was picking fights with cars in the parking lot. The mantis was a bit slow in the morning which made her easy to handle. The spider was also very cooperative even allowing itself to be put under a microscope. At this level of detail, one can see the spider’s heart beat in its abdomen. Fun fact spiders do not have a classical circulatory system but rather a heart that pumps haemolymph into sinus surrounding its internal organs. After thoroughly examining both specimen I released them back into the wild so each could go back to living their lives having learned a valuable lesson about hairless apes and glass jars.
Prairie SpiderSpider heartbeatReleased to hunt birds and mug garden patrons
