In 2021, Lea Richardson conceived and initiated a 2-year study designed to test how fire affects community flowering phenology in remnant prairies in MN. We randomly sampled points in burned and unburned remnants for a total of 294 points. In a 1m radius around each random point, the number of flowering stems were counted for every plant species present in the circle twice a week from July 1-August 31. For some species, the radius extended past 1m. Random points used in this study were the same points used in the stipa project as well as other projects associated with Jared Beck’s postdoc studying fire in remnants. Lea also obtained estimates of total number of flowering plants of certain species for the whole site if the species in question was not in any of the random circles placed on the site (these additional observations should allow for more accurate flowering abundance curves to be obtained). Sites were divided into two driving routes with roughly half of the points visited on Monday and Thursday, and the other half visited Tuesday and Friday. This sampling protocol for the same sites will be repeated in 2022 to be able to compare points with and without fire across two years and among sites. Over 100 flowering species were identified within the circles. Data analysis will proceed on this first year of data in Spring 2022 and will be included as Chapter 4 of Lea’s dissertation.
Lea searches for flowering plants at a random point
Data collected: community phenology data, using visor form ptPhen (all data in aiiSummer2021 repo in ptPhen folder)
Samples or specimens collected: none
Products: [eventually] chapter 4 of Lea Richardson’s dissertation and hopefully a manuscript after 2022 data collection
You can read more about the community flowering phenology in remnants experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
As a part of our research looking into the role fire plays on plant reproduction and population dynamics, we collected geospatial and flowering data on Liatris aspera at 22 prairie remnants in and near Solem Township, MN. Six of these remnants burned in spring of 2021. During the growing season, we collected data on the position, inflorescence count, and number of flowering heads for over 2400 individuals (exact number is unknown still because some individuals were shot twice with the GPS due to calibration errors).
We also randomly selected 234 Liatris as focal plants, which we harvested once they had gone to seed and brought back to the lab for cleaning. We hope to be able to use the inflorescences we collected to quantify seed set and compare density effects between burned and unburned remnants.
Over the summer, Team Echinacea spent 5955 minutes (99 person-hours) shooting Liatris GPS points and 2235 minutes (37 person-hours) harvesting the focal Liatris plants.
Collecting data on a small Liatris
Start year: 2021
Location: 22 prairie remnant sites in and around Solem Township, MN
For Wesley’s individual project, we made pollinator visitation observations and noted the presence or absence of other arthropods on Liatris aspera heads. Using the focal plants from the Liatris fire and flowering study, we were able to perform 95 5-minute observation periods on 84 individual plants. Most visitor identifications were made by eye in the field; however, we captured one bumblebee (released upon identification) and one fly (captured and frozen for future identification). We also recorded presence/absence data for Pennsylvania leatherwings, ants, ambush bugs, spiders, and other beetles.
All focal plants from the Liatris fire and flowering study were brought back to the lab, where the arthropod experiment is continuing via the quantification of seed predation. We have also encountered living larvae throughout the Liatris cleaning process which we hope to identify, possibly through rearing.
A Liatris with two beetles and a bumblebee on its heads
Start year: 2021
Location: 22 prairie remnant sites in and around Solem Township, MN
Data collected: Scanned datasheets and their typed versions can be found in ~Dropbox/remLiatris/liatrisObservations
Samples or specimens collected: 1 fly was captured for identification. Additionally, 234 focal plants were harvested. These plants are currently being cleaned and processed in the lab.
Products: Wesley’s REU was based on this project, which may at some point result in a paper or poster. Stay tuned!
This field season, the team continued the seedling recruitment experiment begun in 2007. The original goal of the project was to determine seedling establishment and growth rates in remnant populations of Echinacea angustifolia. Seedling recruitment rates are rarely studied in the field, and this is one of the few studies tracking recruitment in the tallgrass prairie. From 2007 to 2013 in spring, Team Echinacea visited plants which had flowered in the preceding year, and they searched near these maternal plants to find any emerging seedlings. Each fall since then, the team has searched for the seedlings, then juveniles, and measured them.
In 2021, Team Echinacea visited a subset of the sling plants at 12 prairie remnants from September 21st to September 29th. The team visited 62 focal maternal plants and searched for 117 sling plants of the original 955 seedlings. In total, the team found 49 basal plants, 2 dead this year’s leaves, 3 dead last year’s leaves, and 3 flowering plants! One of these heads, tag 18136 from East Elk Lake Road, was harvested and is currently being cleaned in the lab at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The team did not find the remaining 60 sling plants, and 17 of these plants have not been found for the past 3 years, so they will not be visited in 2022. No slings have been found at East of Town Hall and Northwest of Landfill for the past three years, so the team will not visit these sites in 2022. Unfortunately, after a long, dry summer, many of the plants were crispy and hard to see, especially at Riley and East Riley. Next year, the team should start hunting for slings earlier while they are still green.
This year, Team Echinacea used the visor demo form to collect data and assigned locs 301-474 to the sling plants to relate the demo form to the sling ids. To aid in finding plants next year, team members gave at tag to 53 sling plants and shot a GPS point for each tagged plant. These GPS points will then be added to the stakefile for 2022.
Over the course of 5 days, 6 people spent 1980 minutes (33 person-hours) collecting data for the sling project this summer.
Mia hikes out to visit the slings at Staffanson Prairie West
Start year: 2007
Location: Remnants in Douglas County, MN
Sites with seedling searches: East Elk Lake Road, East Riley, East of Town Hall, KJ’s, Loeffler’s Corner, Landfill, Nessman, Northwest of Landfill, Riley, Steven’s Approach, South of Golf Course, Staffanson Prairie
The data were collected on a visor using the demo form. The team recorded plant status (can’t find, basal, dead this year’s leaves, dead last year’s leaves, flowering), number of rosettes, leaf count, nearest neighbors, and head count, if flowering.
The 2021 sling materials such as maps and scanned datasheets are here: “Dropbox\burnRem\remData\115_trackSeedlings\slingRefinds2021”
The 2021 data from the demo form are here: “Dropbox\burnRem\remData\115_trackSeedlings\slingRefinds2021\slingRefindsData2021.csv”
The 2021 stakefile can be found here: “Dropbox\geospatialDataBackup2021\stakeFiles2021\sling2021stakeV.01.csv”
Samples or specimens collected: One head from East Elk Lake Road was harvested and is currently housed with the rest of the 2021 remnant harvest at the Chicago Botanic Garden
Team members who searched for slings in 2021: Amy Waananen, Ruth Shaw, Mia Stevens, Stuart Wagenius, Jared Beck, Alex Carroll
Products:
Amy Dykstra used seedling survival data from 2010 and 2011 to model population growth rates as a part of her dissertation.
Lea Richardson and Amy Waananen are both working on papers related to the sling dataset. Stay tuned!
You can read more about the seedling establishment experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
We know that burning has a positive effect on flowering in Echinacea. However, fire effects on insects are highly variable. There is very little known about how fire affects insect abundance, particularly how fire affects beneficial insects and their predators. Insect predators such as robber flies, ambush bugs, and crab spiders tend to hunt on Echinacea heads or other inflorescences. The increase in flowering heads may increase the prevalence of bee predators. In addition, the 2021 field crew had a high interest in insects. Therefore, we decided to investigate the abundance of beneficial and insect predators on Echinacea heads.
We were able to take advantage of the burned and unburned remnants to investigate this. Starting on July 7th, during phenology we recorded if any insects were present on each head. If any insects were present, we filled out a multi-selection list preloaded with common insects seen on Echinacea heads. Since we were utilizing the phenology data set, we have data on insects from approximately 2,292 heads every three days from July 7th until the end of the season. We ended up having a MASSIVE data set: 11,941 observations of whether insects were present on Echinacea heads or not.
An ambush bug devouring a bee on an Echinacea head
A crab spider with a horsefly snack; note the numerous styles on this head
Insect predators have been seen using Echinacea heads as hunting grounds
Start year: 2021
Location: All remnant prairie sites (n=32) where phenology was taken
Data collected: Presence/absence data of insects on Echinacea heads. This data has not been cleaned yet, but all the data are in the aiisummer2021/phen folder
Samples or specimens collected: no samples were collected
In summer 2020, Team Echinacea established two plots south of experimental plot 8 for a pilot experiment examining fire effects on Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) reproduction. Neither plot was burned during 2020. During spring 2021, we randomly selected the western plot to be burned.
Within each rectangular plot, we selected 30 random points. We then counted the number of flowering Andropogon culms within circular 1m2 subplot centered on each random point (within 56.4 cm). After excluding random points that overlapped with the plot boundary or other random points, we were left with 24 usable random points in the eastern plot and 23 usable random points in the western plot.
Stakefile for random plot locations: ~Dropbox/geospatialDataBackup2021/stakeFiles2021/stakeAndroPilot2021.csv
Scanned data sheets: ~Dropbox/burnRems/pilotAndro/androPilot2021
Samples or specimens collected: Seed heads collected from 2020 and 2021 are currently stored in Jared’s office. These have been dried and will be cleaned / x-rayed to quantify seed set.
Products: Stay tuned!
You can read more about the Andropogon fire and flowering in exPt08 experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
In 2021, Team Echinacea established 76 transects (each 4 m long) across 32 patches of remnant prairie in the study area. Transect locations were determined by generating an ordered list of random points (random integers corresponding with MN state plane coordinate system) within each remnant and selecting the first 2-4 random points that were located within ~5m of an adult Echinacea but avoided dense patches of flowering plants where we may have difficulty distinguishing experimental seedlings from natural recruits. Each transect originating at a random point is 4-m long and contains four 1-m segments. Most transects extend North from the random point but some extend East (in sites where North-South transects may span an entire ditch). One segment per transect was chosen at random to be planted in fall 2021 and one transect chosen at random to be planted during fall 2022.
Map of 76 transects
Start year: 2021
Location: 32 patches of remnant prairie in and around Solem Township, MN
Data collected: locations for seed addition transects: ~echinaceagis/remSeedAdditionExpt/remSeedExptTransectLocations.csv
Samples or specimens collected: NA
Products: Stay tuned!
You can read more about the seed addition transects in remnants, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
As part of the 2020 NSF grant to study fire effects on plant reproduction and population dynamics, we are implementing a seed addition experiment in numerous remnants. From previous studies, we know that fire can improve recruitment, which is important for population growth. However, our previous observations of recruitment in remnants conflate the amount of seed entering the seed bank and the seedlings emerging from the seed bank. The goal of this seed addition experiment is to help us directly quantify the effects of fire on seedling emergence and early seedling fitness. We will use these data to parameterize demographic models for Echinacea.
For the seed addition experiment, we established 76 transects distributed across 32 prairie remnants with Echinacea. One segment per transect was chosen at random to be planted in fall 2021 and one transect chosen at random to be planted during fall 2022. The study includes 9 sites burned during spring 2021 as well as 7 sites slated to burn during spring 2022. Seeds were sowed in groups of 50 (either one or two packets of 50 per segment planted). All seeds were derived from the 2016 heads harvested in p2.
Foggy transect at the hulz hills
Start year: 2021
Location: 32 patches of remnant prairie in and around Solem Township, MN
Data collected: All data related to planting can be found here: ~Dropbox/burnRems/seedExp
Samples or specimens collected: Seed packets to be planted in fall 2022 are stored in see-through glass cabinets in the population biology lab at CBG.
Products: Stay tuned!
You can read more about the fire and seedling fitness in remnants experiment, as well as links to prior flog entries about this experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
As part of the Echinacea Project’s long-term efforts to monitor reproductive fitness in the remnant populations, Team Echinacea harvested 383 seeds heads from 29 remnants during summer 2021. We randomly selected 15 heads from each population to harvest. If a population had less than 15 flowering plants, we harvested a randomly selected head from all flowering plants. In the fragmented populations we study, flowering plants often fail to produce viable seed due to limited mating opportunities. By harvesting seed heads and quantifying seed set, we can better understand how the spatial location and flowering phenology of Echinacea contribute to reproductive fitness. We are keenly interested in understanding how fire influences reproductive outcomes in fragmented prairies. To this end, we harvested seed heads from 8 populations experimentally burned during spring 2021. We will examine how fire influences mating opportunities and seed set across different populations ranging in size.
These heads we harvested are currently in the CBG lab being cleaned by volunteers and interns. We have even started scanning and counting achenes! Soon the new x-ray will be up and running, and we will begin to answer the burning questions we have about Echinacea reproduction in fragmented prairie remnants.
Stuart and Mia playing a game “harvest now?” to get independent assessments of whether Echinacea heads are ready to harvest
Start year: 1996
Location: Roadsides, railroad rights of way, and nature preserves in and around Solem Township, MN
Data/Materials collected: 383 seed heads were collected; these are currently at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Data sheets and other materials can be found here: ~Dropbox/remData
Products: We will compile seed set data from 2021 into a dataset with seed set data from previous years.
You can read more about reproductive fitness in remnants, as well as links to previous flog entries mentioning the experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
