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Hi Flog!
I’m sitting in Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center, taking a break from hearing about all the great work people from all over the place have been doing. I thought that this was a good time to update you on how my poster presentation went (Mostly because the convention center has free wifi and our hotel doesn’t. What?! how can it be 2016 and there not be free wifi…)!
I arrived in lovely* Fort Lauderdale Sunday afternoon, this is the first conference I have been to and It is a little overwhelming but also super exciting! I presented my poster on “The heritability of flowering time and duration in Echinacea angustifolia” last night (Monday). Lots of people stopped by and it was really fun getting to explain all of the work I had done over the past year to them. The poster session lasted for 2 hours but it felt like 15 minutes.
Amy is here with me and she is going to be presenting her poster on Thursday night!
*Lovely – 90 percent humidity and 90 degrees
Below is a link to a PDF of my poster for closer inspection!
esaposter_willreedvf-1-1-1
Hello floggy friends!
This morning, Leah and I left Town Hall to embark on a crazy road trip to Michigan. As we were driving, other members of Team Echinacea participated in the FlekkeFest 5k and witnessed history at the International Vinegar Museum. I’ve only been gone for about 14 hours, but I already miss everyone so much. To pass the time during our car trip, Leah and I shared fun stories from the summer.
Other notable moments from our trip include:
- Witnessing a “noutfit” or what others would call a “neon outfit”
- License plates from 16 different states
- Stopping at Taco Bell more than once
- Listening to “Too Good” only once and “Cold Water” four times (contrary to popular belief by members of Town Hall)
Great roommates must think alike, because as Leah was posting about what members of Team Echinacea taught us, I wanted to share what we taught Team Echinacea during our two months in Minnesota. I’d say we taught them a few valuable life lessons:
- Sometimes you just need to stop and look at all those mushrooms
- If you don’t listen to Drake or Justin Bieber during a car ride, you’re doing it wrong
- If a picture is worth 1000 words, an emoji must be worth so much more
- Not only does singing to aphids get the job done (thanks Abby for that tip), but singing to pollinators and basal plants in experimental plots also does the trick
- Anyone can learn how to cook, but it’s not a good meal unless you add at least 3 different kinds of cheese
- Prairies are pretty cool, but bogs might be better (minus the buckthorn and mosquitoes)
- Dance parties are acceptable at any time of day
- You shouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect (namely the perfect meter stick or fork size)
- Embrace being silly and awkward, because the people mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind.
Finally, I’d just like to thank everyone for all the support and guidance they’ve given me this summer. I’ll never forget this amazing group of people and I can’t wait to see how everyone else’s projects go and I can’t wait to keep snapchatting everyone (*nudge nudge Town Hall fam I’m talking about you).
Catch ya on the flippity flop,
Alyson
![Untitled](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20500%20437'%3E%3C/svg%3E) Peace out, Kensington! Ps- Thanks Scott for taking this adorable pic and seeing us off this morning (at the insane hour of 6am)
Good afternoon floggers, today was a busy and hot day in the lab! The air conditioner stopped working this morning, so we all got a bit of a sweat from cleaning and counting. This week has been lonely without Danny, but the volunteers are keeping up the amazing work. We are almost on the 8th bag of Echinacea heads that need to be cleaned and experiment 96_a is done being counted! I finished re-checking a second tray of achene samples, which means I have only one more tray left to re-check. Below is a picture of our current counting progress. We still have a ways to go, but every day moves us forward. Have a great rest of the afternoon floggers!
![IMG_2125](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20320%20240'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Good afternoon floggers! This week, volunteers have been speeding through both counting and cleaning Echinacea heads in the lab. We are on the 7th bag of Echinacea heads and the counting for Experiment 96a is 86.2% done. Also, I have completed rechecking an entire tray of achenes, only two more trays to go! Tomorrow, Danny will be leaving the lab to move back to Minnesota to pursue a master’s degree in Data Science. I would like to thank him for always being so kind, answering all my questions and teaching me everything there is to know about the processes in the lab. We wish Danny good luck & will miss him very much!
![IMG_2113](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20240%20320'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Today we weren’t just Team Echinacea. We were Extreme Team Echinacea. Will used his monster truck derby announcing voice to let everyone know that what we were doing today was extreme. This morning, we were sent out on special missions to do phenology, pollinator observations, or both (so extreme). We finished everything and still had time to collect phlox seed and do an aphid treatment before lunch. Wow.
At lunch, we talked about fun afternoon project ideas, like seeing whose car has the best working AC and finding out which area lake is best for swimming. Instead of doing those things, we got right back out to measure P1, which has a climate similar to a sauna. Every group only had to measure 2 rows and we were done for the week.
Back at the Hjelm House, Scott found some aphids crawling on his shirt and adopted them as his own children. We all enjoyed some root beer floats, and Scott enjoyed his new found fatherhood.
![YAY FOR ROOT BEER FLOATS!!](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20375%20500'%3E%3C/svg%3E) YAY FOR ROOT BEER FLOATS!!
Howdy floggers! This week in the lab, volunteers have been making great progress! Bag 6 (of 12) of Echinacea heads used for cleaning is just about halfway done. My personal progress while volunteering in the lab so far includes cleaning about ten Echinacea heads and counting 41 heads (or 5353 achenes) online. While counting, I encountered my first HUGE Echinacea head, it took about an hour and 15 minutes to clean! I also have been re-checking achenes for tails, otherwise known as florets, before they are weighed and x-rayed. I have re-checked 15 boxes with around 30 randomized samples each of achenes, however, most of the time, achenes don’t have their florets attached anymore. Finally, I have finished randomizing about 60 sample bags of achenes. It has been a successful week in the lab and we send a hello to our team members and partners out in the field! Here is a picture demonstrating how close each bag of Echinacea is to the finish line!
![IMG_2093](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20240%20320'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Not only did we finish phenology and get a great start on P2 today, I finished my independent project proposal! My research this summer is focused on how pollinator foraging behavior towards Echinacea changes over the course of the season as a result of community changes. I will look at what taxa are exhibiting flower constancy towards Echinacea by conducting observations and I will analyze their pollen loads under a microscope to determine what conspecific pollen bees are carrying to Echinacea and what ratio of their load is Echinacea pollen. My research will hopefully help the Echinacea Project better understand how pollinators could be contributing to Echinacea‘s pollen limitation and reproductive fitness.
Prescott Proposal 2016
Here is a proposal for a fun project. It involves using demography data from this (and prior) years to estimate the growth rates of each of the remnants individually. Actually, that’s basically the whole project. Action items for the next month include: reading technical manuals with specifics on implementing aster models (see the list of project publications if you want to read them for me on your own).
scott_proposal_1
In other Scott-research related news, I will also try modeling fitness of various Hesperostipa spartea crosses in experimental plot 1. Just today I got a list of positions of plants found alive in 2016 — my plan in the near future is to search positions in the plot where plants were found alive in 2011 but weren’t found in 2016 to assess mortality. Keep your eyes open for another action-packed research proposal for this porcupine grass-ey project.
![IMG_2071](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20320%20240'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Hi everyone! This week in the lab the volunteers have been working hard to progress with the Echinacea Project! This morning Art demonstrated and explained how to use the x-ray machine to identify whether achenes have embryos inside of them or not. During the rest of the day I worked on cleaning, counting, randomizing and rechecking achenes. These are the steps the achenes must be go through before they can be x-rayed and weighed. The past two weeks have gone very smoothly and we are now on our 6th (out of 12) bag of Echinacea heads that are in the process of being cleaned. Thanks for reading! 🙂
We met a half hour early today so we could do pollinator observations during what we thought would be their peak time. We were wrong. Hardly any bees were out and about on this very windy morning. Everyone finished around 10:30 and we met down in P1 to weed the birdsfoot trefoil.
![This little mouse greeted us in G3 this morning.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20242%20323'%3E%3C/svg%3E) This little mouse greeted us in G3 this morning.
The lunch table was very crowded today as we had a number of special visitors. Ruth Shaw, Dan (a grad student from U of M), and Amy and Brad Dykstra all came to help out. They also brought yummy chocolates and muffins for a lunch treat.
After lunch, everyone set out different ways. Some people went GPSing and some went to catch pollinators. I got to stay back to teach Lea, Scott, Alyson, and James my special talent, aphid exclusion and addition. Last summer, I worked a lot on the aphid project so it was a lot of fun to do again! Alyson even sang to the aphids to sooth them into their new homes. Roxy saw how much fun we were having and decided to join us for awhile in P1. We found 70/100 original addition/exclusion plants, including 33/50 addition and 37/50 exclusion ones.
![Here's some aphids I found on a collection plant in P1.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20336%20252'%3E%3C/svg%3E) Here’s some aphids I found on a collection plant in P1.
![Team members learning the ways of aphids.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20285%20380'%3E%3C/svg%3E) Team members learning the ways of aphids.
Today I also took my first trip to the infamous bog with Alyson and James! Roxy, the bog dog, took me on a wonderful tour of the place. On our way up, we stopped to pet the goats.
![Alyson trying to escape the treacherous bog waters.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20262%20349'%3E%3C/svg%3E) Alyson trying to escape the treacherous bog waters.
![Scape Goat eats out of James's hand.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20388%20388'%3E%3C/svg%3E) Scape Goat eats out of James’s hand.
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