I am happy to say that the Liatris Project is off to a good start. After taking inventory of all the Liatris plants this past week, I got to start the cleaning process. A total of 293 Liatris plants have been counted in the inventory, and all have been sorted randomly into 5 different batches. Today, I got to start cleaning the ones in the 1st batch, and while cleaning, I noticed several similarities and differences compared to cleaning Echinacea plants. Overall, I found that Liatris achenes were much easier to extract from the plant than Echinacea achenes, but counting them proved much more challenging. To make things easier, random selection sheets of different numerical ranges were arranged that listed random numbers from left to right down the sheets. Using these sheets, I could randomly pick out a flower head and count the number of achenes associated with that head. I also had to observe if any achenes were missing from each head on a Liatris plant. I recorded the total number of heads per plant and the number of heads with no achenes, some achenes, or all achenes missing. After taking these recordings, I removed all the other achenes present on the Liatris plants and sorted them into an envelope. Any chaff leftover got put into a separate envelope labeled as “chaff.” So far, a handful of plants have been cleaned, but there is still a long way to go.
Today will mark the beginning of a new project that I will conduct analyzing Liatris aspera (Rough Blazing Star). Like with the Echinacea Project, this project will look at reproductive quantities of Liatris and the potential factors for influencing plant reproduction. At the moment, a specific research question is still in the works and the actual project requires some introductory steps that need to be completed. In the lab, I conducted inventory checks for the Liatris plants that have been harvested and made sure their were not any errors in what was taken into inventory. While doing the checking, I had Leah help me make sure everything was accounted for. Trying to do this alone would have been frustrating so I send my absolute thanks for helping me out with this part. As for the next steps in the project, I hope to begin cleaning the Liatris plants next week and start to come up with a potential research question in the near future. Very exciting things to come!
see the “Phases” section about Kuhn’s phases of paradigm change
Discussion questions:
What paradigm shifts have occurred in the fields of ecology and plant science? Have any occurred recently?
Conversely, have you observed new research in the field becoming less disruptive over time? If so, do you agree with the authors’ suggestion that this can be attributed to researchers focusing on “narrower slices of previous work”? (142)
What is your perception of the paper’s measure of disruptiveness (CD5)? What might be some strengths and weaknesses of this approach?
Do the popular media pieces effectively communicate the paper’s findings to a general audience? What angles do they take in their explainers, and why?
Though papers have become less disruptive on average, the quantity of disruptive papers has remained largely consistent. Do you agree with the paper’s proposal of a carrying capacity for highly disruptive papers?
Is a decline in disruptiveness exclusively a bad thing? Consider Kuhn’s ideas on “paradigms.”
After a successful field season, Team Echinacea has moved back to the lab at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Today, I received a cryptic email from CBG suggesting that there were free items left over from the Roadside Flower Sale, and they were located in Briller Hall, next to the pole barn. Lindsey and I decided to investigate, but we had never heard of Briller Hall or the pole barn. We looked for them on the map of the Garden, but they weren’t listed. We hunted for them on CBG’s website, but there were no search results. Mystified, we asked the volunteers in the lab whether these were real buildings. Neither Allen nor Char had been there, but Allen recognized the names and thought that they were located somewhere nearby. Determined to identify the elusive Roadside Flower Sale, Lindsey and I set off on a quest.
First, we walked south from the lab. We passed the greenhouses and spotted the maintenance sheds, but we didn’t find any pole barns there. How hard could it be to hide a barn? we wondered. When we passed some volunteers who were outside weeding, we asked them if they had heard of Briller Hall. They hadn’t, but they directed us to a CBG worker named Javier who was zipping by on his golf cart. Javier exclaimed that he was on his way to the pole barn just then! He invited us to hop on, so we crammed into the golf cart, and he dropped us off at the secret Briller Hall.
Inside, we found a wide array of marvelous items ranging from bags of acorns to stacks of staplers to a single wooden shoe. We collected many useful items, some for personal craft projects and some for the lab. Our glorious horde included:
5-gallon buckets with lids (they smell rather strongly of lavender potpourri)
duct tape in at least 7 vibrant colors
a sturdy rake for Jared to clear burn breaks
sharp scissors
small notebooks for the summer team’s pouches
a giant hot glue gun for Lindsey’s craft projects
I celebrate the many goodies we found at the top-secret Briller Hall
Overall, we were quite pleased with the success of our reconnaissance mission, and the lab now has a grand supply of staplers, colorful cardstock, and thumb tacks.
It’s been a busy spring at the lab: 11 volunteers and 6 students from Northwestern and Lake Forest College contributed to the Echinacea Project. We are currently wrapping up before field season starts, and we want to celebrate everything they accomplished in the last few months! Since January, volunteers and students:
Here is a recap of the Orchid Show if you missed it this year! The annual orchid show at the Chicago Botanic Garden displays a wide collection of orchids. This event celebrates the beginning of spring with the unique and vibrant colors that orchids have to offer. After hearing great reviews from friends that visited the exhibition, I knew I couldn’t miss the opportunity to be mesmerized by orchids myself. Roaming through rooms filled with orchids was a magical experience. Your environment is transformed into a tropical paradise of thousands of blooming orchids. Some of them hang from the ceiling and others grow from patches of moss positioned on a man made tree. Every turn of the corner and you will see a unique combination of colors. The variation amongst different species is incredible. One of my favorites reminded me of a sunset, she had the perfect gradient of yellow, peach and pink. I was surprised to find an orchid that happen to match my hair color, which is an aqua mint green. The beauty of orchids will truly take your breath away. The orchids had my undivided attention and I enjoyed spending time to appreciate their beauty. Sometimes we all need an afternoon to look at nothing but pretty flowers 😉 If you missed the orchid show this time, be sure to come back next year for a mesmerizing experience!
A note to future Team Echinacea members: Are you still wearing masks all the time? Are you still 3 years behind on cleaning Echinacea heads or have you caught up a little bit?
Anyway, in the summer of 2020 there were 18 heads of Echinacea pallida that were harvested. 11 of these heads were a part of Anna Meehan’s hybrid compatibility experiment. All of the pallida heads are NOT going through the ACE process; they are in the lab all together nice and neat. These 18 pallida heads will not be a part of hh2020. EXCEPT the hybrid plant head (AP-772) who will stay apart of hh.2020 since we need achene count eventually but for now it will stay here until it is dissected.
The heads are in a box labeled “Anna Meehan’s Hybrid Compatibility experiment & E. pallida heads 2020″ in the glass cabinets right as you enter the ecology lab.
The hybrid compatibility experiment would be a perfect project for a student in the lab for a few weeks. They could asses the compatibility of the hybrid with not only the E. angustifolia but also the E. pallida. The experiment is designed with backcrosses (hybrid to parent) and forward crosses (parent to hybrid don’t know if this is the right word I just made it up). The student would be able to access seed set on the hybrid, E. angustifolia, & E. pallida heads. The sample size is fairly small but this would conclude a good pilot study for further studies of the hybrid compatibilities. We also need achene count of the hybrid plant (AP-227)!
On Friday, volunteers Marty and Mike finished cleaning the last batch of heads from the 2018 common garden experiment. Huzzah! The volunteers had been working on the 2018 heads back before the pandemic started, and after a long break, 2018 is finally done. Many thanks to all the volunteers who made this possible, especially the 2021-2022 crew: Allen, Char, Elif, Laura, Luk, Marty, Mike, and Suzanne! Now, we have a lot of rechecking to do.
On Friday, grad student Amy W. paid a visit to the lab at the Chicago Botanic Garden to x-ray Echinacea achenes for several of her projects including the Dust Project, interremnant crosses, and gene flow experiments. We’re thrilled to have a functional x-ray machine once again. Amy noticed lots of variation in her samples, so we’re excited to learn about seed set for these experiments!
This week I was able to clearly define the research question for the L. philadelphicum project. My research question is focused on investigating pollination and reproduction success in wood lily. Specifically, does seed set increase with the proximity of neighboring flowers. If lilies have closer proximity to neighboring flowers, then the proportion of fertilized seeds will increase as well. We will be able to test our hypothesis with the collected seed data and recorded GPS location of each individual plant. Additionally, I made progress on cleaning lilium seeds and started writing the scanning protocol. We found that using an ionizing bar will help prevent static which causes the seeds to be difficult to handle (See Fig 1).
Furthermore, I was able to create a graph representing the progress of the lilium project with the help of Alex (Fig 3). Similarly, to echinacea, the lilium project will also go through the main steps of cleaning, scanning, counting and x-raying. This graph allows us to visualize the progress being made in the ACE protocol for L. philadelphicum. Stay tuned for next week while we experiment with methods in counting and x-raying lilium seeds!
Figure 1. Sophia cleaning ilium pods with ionizing bar
