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With nearly all of our plants mapped at Staffanson, Claire and I have taken a little sneak peak at the spatial data we collected (it’s like Christmas in July, we just couldn’t wait to open our presents). I have included a graph depicting the the average distance from each flowering Echinacea plant to its kth nearest neighbor. The distribution of distances were nearly all skewed right so I plotted the natural log-transformed distances +/- the SE. There are clear differences between the East and West units (note that the East unit was burned in 2014).
knnspp2014.pdf
Although this graph does not necessarily reflect distances to the true nearest flowering neighbors (we only included distances for plants mapped on our sampling transect), these data are consistent with our hypothesis that fire increases the density of flowering Echinacea. More to come soon…
The field season is heating up for Team Echinacea both literally and metaphorically. Much of the metaphorical heat comes from the awesome work everyone has been putting into group and independent projects. However, a small portion of this heat also comes from a budding relationship between Andrea and I that was sparked at experimental plot 2 a week ago. On my day off, I missed her so much I simply had to draw a picture of her.
Why is Andrea so special to me? One important reason is that she is an Andrena bee and Andrena seem to be the most efficient pollinators of Echinacea angustifolia based on our preliminary findings. Another reason is that she is absolutely adorable and very photogenic.
Aside from missing Andrea, I also made dinner for the team. I decided on sweet potato black bean tacos with homemade tortillas. Mmmm…..
With Echinacea’s flowering reaching its peak, there isn’t a better idiom to describe the team’s work schedule for the week. Remnant phenology, independent projects, and a large scale compatibility project are just a few of the tasks being carried out on a regular basis. As for the pollinator project Maureen and I have been working on, things are going great. After alternating back and forth between P1 and P2, we have accumulated over 60 observations, which is a little over half of what we are aiming for. Towards the beginning, we saw mostly small green bees, but recently we have started seeing more and more of the larger bees, such as Melisodes and Andrena. For example, we added 7 more Andrena observations just today, which more than tripled the Andrena observations we had up to this point. Things may be a little hectic at Team Echinacea headquarters, but this doesn’t mean we are all work and no play. Just tonight we enjoyed a post work bonfire with s’mores, badminton, and croquet. You might even say it was the…… bee’s knees!
And just in case this post didn’t contain enough corny pollinator references, here’s a couple of pictures of a pair of Melisodes teaching us a lesson about the Birds and the Bees.
Today marked the first weekday of the peak week of flowering for Echinacea. We are working on phenology at all the remnants as will as P1. Several flowers are already on their last day of flowering. Despite the cold and blustery conditions of today the team did crosses for the compatibility project at Loeffler’s Corner and set up the project at East Elk Lake Road. Cam and I worked on my exhaustive crossing project at Yellow Orchid Hill. We weren’t able to collect pollen and cross until after lunch, but fortunately the pollen was not blown away by the wind! Tomorrow will be more phenology and compatibility!
Today was a big day for remnant phenology surveys–possibly our biggest of the season. We made the process more efficient by not recording style persistence on flowers on their 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 8th days of flowering.
But we didn’t stop there. We also collected pollen, painted bracts, and performed the first crosses with the 10 focal plants at Riley. Each focal plant was crossed with its nearest neighbor, its farthest neighbor within the remnant, the earliest flowering plant, and the latest flowering plant. This is to help us understand how compatibility varies across space and flowering time.
In other news, Will and I saw an immature bald eagle amongst the gulls and turkey vultures at the landfill.
Here is the latest draft of my proposal to investigate the survival rates of Aphis echinaceae on Echinacea hybrids and the impact they have on host fitness:
CMS_proposal_8Jul2014.pdf
I’m excited to get started. In addition to my main project, I will be conducting and coordinating a variety of side projects related to aphids and Echinacea hybrids:
1. Katherine Muller and Lydia English’s aphid addition/exclusion experiment in P1.
2. Assessing fitness of the two Echinacea species and their hybrids in P6 (Josh’s Garden) and P7 (at Hegg Lake).
3. Recording flowering phenology of Echinacea pallida at Hegg Lake, where they were planted in a prairie restoration.
Today Jared, Will and I spent the afternoon at Staffanson Prairie Preserve wrangling the blooming Echincea with flags and twist ties while also updating our flowering map of 2014. We’re working to find plants that were used in phenology studies in previous years so we can look at how a single plant’s flowering pattern changes over time. Here’s a map of the plants we’ve found so far this year, overlaid on multiple years of previously mapped plants.
staffmap.pdf
While out and about in Staffanson it’s easy to get drawn into the morphing landscape as new species begin to bloom. Here’s a picture of one of our favorites, Delphinium carolinianum.
Today the whole team was busy mapping and monitoring the phenology of Echinacea at numerous remnants. Although mosquitoes, gopher holes, and construction crews conspired against us, we were able to complete all monitoring before a bout of afternoon rain.
Here is a quick and dirty map of flowering Echinacea plants at Staffanson prairie that were mapped between 2011 and 2013. Please note that west, rather than north, is “up” on this map (the unusual orientation of this map is just for my convenience)…
sppmap
Having mutually pledged to the Echinacea Project our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor, we set out this fine Saturday morning to survey the flowering phenology of Echinacea in the prairie remnants. We are interested in phenology (the study of recurring phenomena) because just as distance can genetically isolate fragmented populations, so can time. Since Echinacea cannot reproduce with itself, it needs to be flowering at the same time as a compatible mate if it wants a chance to reproduce.
To quantify flowering phenology, we have to check on the flowers every few days. Echinacea is just beginning to flower now, and we don’t want to miss anything. Today we split up into two-person teams, went to different remnants, and recorded the progress of every flowering Echinacea. All our work locating and flagging plants earlier this week allowed us to move efficiently through the sites, finishing our survey by mid-day. Here we are converging at the final site:
A formidable crew undertaking a daunting task in pursuit of a noble goal: what a glorious Saturday!
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