Gordon presented his poster, “Prairie fires and reproductive success of the purple coneflower” at the Northwestern Undergraduate Research and Arts Exposition. Here are some pictures from the event and his poster, which you can find here.
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The Stipa Project — studying the effects of habitat fragmentation on the ecology and evolution of Stipa, a cool-season grass. In 2009 & 2010 we planted over 4,000 Stipa seeds in exPt 1. We’ve been put to the test trying to find our Stipa plants in a matrix of other grasses, but once they flower they are easy to spot. While we collected seed from Stipa in our common garden in 2014, our 2015 search for flowering Stipa plants was fruitless! Read more about the Stipa experiment. Start year: 2009 Location: exPt1
 2015 measuring qGen1: finding EA in a sea of flowering big bluestem! The qGen1 (quantitative genetics) experiment investigates the heritability of traits in Echinacea angustifolia. During the summer of 2002 we crossed plants from the 1996 & 1997 cohorts of exPt1. We harvested heads, dissected achenes, and germinated seeds over the winter. In the Spring of 2003 we planted the resulting 4468 seedlings (this great number gave rise to this experiment’s nickname “big batch”). In 2015 we assessed survival and fitness measures of the qGen1 plants. Here’s a summary of what we found:
Read more about the qGen1 experiment. Start year: 2003 Location: exPt1
We annually assess survival and fitness of these plants. In 2015 we relocated and measured 42 individuals of the 381 seedlings originally found. These plants had 1-3 leaves; the longest leaf was 21 cm. The dense non-native brome grass dominating this plot may be shading out these small plants. It should be interesting to see which individuals are hanging on! Read more about this experiment. Start year: 2008 Site: exPt 4 at Hegg Lake WMA Overlaps with: crossing experiments qGen1, qGen2, qGen3 & recruitment experiment; INB1  Pollen vials from sire 403 used in qGen3 The goal of the qGen2 and qGen3 experiments is to compare the evolutionary potential of two remnant prairie populations of Echinacea angustifolia by estimating the additive genetic variance of fitness under two mating scenarios: crosses performed within the core sites (core x core) and crosses performed between the core site and nearby sites (core x periphery). Additionally, we will test for differentiation among families; do progeny from sires differ after accounting for maternal (dam) effects? In June 2015 we assessed survival and measured 1-year-old plants from qGen2. During the summer and fall of 2015 we replicated the qGen2 experiment through a second crossing experiment. We sowed the resulting achenes in exPt 8 as our qGen3 cohort. Read more about the qgen2 and qgen3 experiments.  Dam to be crossed with pollen from 2 sires Start year qGen2: 2013 Start year qGen3: 2015 Location: exPt 1 (dams), remnants Landfill and Staffanson (sires), remnants Landfill (core) & around Landfill (peripheral) and remnants Staffanson (core) & railroad crossing sites (peripheral) (grand-dams), exPt 8 (progeny) Overlaps with: Heritability of fitness–qGen1
 Echinacea head with pollinator exclusion bag In this experiment we assess the long-term effects of pollen addition and exclusion on plant fitness. In 2012 and 2013 we identified flowering E. angustifolia plants in experimental plot 1 and randomly assigned one of two treatments to each: pollen addition or pollen exclusion. When plants flower in subsequent years they receive the same treatment they were originally assigned. Team Echinacea members record plant fitness characteristics annually. Here is the 2015 summary of the status of the 19 original plants in each experimental treatment:
Read more about this experiment. Start year: 2012 Location: experimental plot 1
 Illustration by Jeremie Fant Cirsium hillii (Hill’s thistle), like Echinacea, is a native, self-incompatible, prairie species that grows in high, dry soils. However, Hill’s thistle is listed as a Species of Special Concern in Minnesota and little is known about how it responds to fire. We study effects of fire on the fitness of C. hillii plants at Hegg Lake WMA. Burn and non-burn units were designated prior to an experimental fall burn conducted by the DNR in 2014. That year, we mapped 28 C. hillii plants (basal and flowering) in those plots. Following the burn in summer 2015, there were two flowering C. hillii individuals. Team Echinacea assessed survival and collected tissue samples from plants for analysis by Abbey White, a MS student in Northwestern’s Plant Biology and Conservation Program. Abbey used microsatellite markers to describe patterns of genetic diversity across the Midwestern range of C. hillii and determine if inbreeding or clonal growth contribute to the low seed set observed in the region. So far she has seen evidence for a lot of clonal growth. This has a direct application to the restoration of C. hillii since the number of plants we see may not be representative of the number of genetic individuals in the population. We will revisit plants annual to assess their survival and reproduction.
Start year: 2014 Site: Hegg Lake WMA Overlaps with: fire and flowering at Staffanson Prairie Preserve
In 2015, we continued to gather demographic information on Echinacea angustifolia in remnant prairie populations. We went to 32 remnant prairies ranging size from 1 flowering plant to 289 flowering plants. This year at our largest site, the Staffanson Prairie Preserve, we collected demographic information on 318 individual plants including 175 flowering plants. Across all the sites, we found 1561 flowering plants and visited a total of 1889 plants. For each plant that we visit, we record whether the plant is alive, whether the plant is flowering, and how many flowering heads it produces. We currently have former team member Lydia English and current team member Will Reed working on organizing the previous 20 years of data using methods that Stuart, Jared, and Gretel developed last year. So far we have organized data from 2010-2015 (years we used GPS units) in 10 sites and data for all 1995-2015 for Staffanson Prairie Preserve. Read previous posts about this experiment.
Start year: 1995 Location: more than 30 remnant prairies in and near Solem Township, Minnesota Overlaps with: fire and flowering at SPP, flowering phenology in remnants Products: Wagenius, S. 2006. Scale dependence of reproductive failure in fragmented Echinacea populations. Ecology 87:931-941. PDF | Supplemental Material Project “demap” – organized survey, demography, and phenology data. In 2015, we continued to assess survival and growth of plants that were found as seedlings in the springs of 2007 to 2013. This year we went to 13 sites and 142 parental plants. We found a total of 162 former seedlings with 48 of those at the site East Elk Lake Road. At first, the task of reading the maps and triangulating plant positions was hard for the team. We were worried we weren’t going to finish by the end of the field season. But, once we got the hang of it, we sped through with ease. Read other posts about this experiment.
Start year: 2007 Location: Remnant prairies in central Minnesota Overlaps with: demographic census in remnants Products: Check the flog for preliminary results and annual reports.  Plenty of basal leaves but no flowering in Amy Dykstra’s local adaptation experimental plots in 2015 In 2008, Amy Dykstra began an experiment to study how adapted Echinacea populations are to their local environments. She collected achenes from three populations distributed across a wide section of Echinacea angustifolia’s range, from Western South Dakota to our study site in Western Minnesota. She established a plot near each collection site where she sowed achenes from all sites. Since then, Amy has assessed survival and fitness traits of the individuals in her plots annually. Amy expected to see increasing proportions of achenes emerging as seedlings with decreasing distance between the seed source and the sowing site. Instead she found that seedling emergence increased by sowing site from western to central South Dakota to Minnesota, and that at each site achenes from Minnesota and western South Dakota had higher seedling emergence than those collected at the central South Dakota site. This result suggests that there isn’t evidence of local adaptation in Echinacea seedling establishment, but that source population matters, potentially due to maternal effects. After six years of tracking survival to fitness, however, there is some indication that local adaptation may play a role in later life stages. No individuals have flowered yet in any of the plots, which is somewhat surprising for Echinacea angustifolia individuals which are typically 5-7 years old before flowering for the first time. Amy will continue this study in 2016, so stay tuned for updates! Start year: 2008 Location: Grand River National Grassland (Western South Dakota), Samuel H. Ordway Prairie (Central South Dakota), Staffanson Prairie Preserve (West Central Minnesota), and Hegg Lake WMA (West Central Minnesota). Overlaps with: Dykstra’s interpopulation crosses Team members who have worked on this project: Amy Dykstra, flog posts written by Amy may provide additional detail about activities associated the the development and continuing progress on this project. |
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Caroline Ridley established this experiment to compare fitness (recruitment and survival) of seeds originating from individuals with parents from three different backgrounds: 1. both from a large remnant population, 2. both from a small remnant population (not rescued), and 3. one from a large population and one from a small population (genetically rescued). Caroline sowed achenes in an experimental plot at Hegg Lake WMA and marked seedlings with colored toothpicks in May 2009. 
