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Greetings from the green prairie! After a few days in the field, I feel I have a good handle on the projects done in the past and the current research. My name is Greg Diersen and this is my first year with Team Echinacea. I teach Biology (happy pollinator week) at Great Plains Lutheran High School in Watertown, South Dakota. That location in NE South Dakota is about a 2-hr drive from the Kensington/Hoffman area. They both have a “prairie pothole” landscape and have many of the same flora/fauna. My initial projects for this summer are to become “prairie literate” – able to identify the majority of plants and many insects in addition to the larger organisms with which I am already familiar. As I learn the “tallgrass” plants and insects – I will be comparing and contrasting the “mixed” prairie types of Eastern South Dakota.
I should introduce myself to the new Team – I’m Ruth Shaw. I’ve collaborated with Stuart and the Team on this project since 2000. I’m a professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. Broadly speaking, my research addresses questions about ongoing evolution in plant populations, and I have found this project on the evolutionary consequences of fragmentation of populations of Echinacea endlessly stimulating!
I’m just back from the joint meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, The American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biology, where I gave a brief talk about some of our results based on 7-years of data on “Inb1” an experiment to compare the effects of inbreeding and of crossing between remnants. This experiment has been growing in the common garden since 2000, and we have now documented that the degree of inbreeding depression is exceptional, far exceeding that found in other studies. Intriguingly, we have also found that both inbreds and progeny of between remnant crosses harbor more of the specialist aphid than plants derived by random mating within remnants.
A special highlight of the meeting is that our paper about estimating fitness, with examples (available via the main echinacea website), received the President’s Award, chosen by the current President of ASN as outstanding paper of 2008 in the journal, The American Naturalist. Quite an honor!
I was out in Douglas County in late May for the early monitoring of seedling recruitment in the remnants, and I’m glad to hear that process is moving forward well! I’m looking forward to getting back out there and working with you all soon!
Hello! My name is Daniel Rath, a rising senior Biology major from Carleton College, Minnesota. I’ll be working with Stuart and the other incredible members of the Echinacea project all summer to find out the answers to some of the most interesting, fascinating and incredible questions about the prairie ever conceived.
Well, I might be exaggerating, but only a little.
I am 19 years old, born and raised in Dangriga, Belize, C.A., and ever since I worked in the Carleton Arboretum restoring prairie, I have had an intense fascination with the Midwest prairie ecosystem. I came to Kensington the day after Carleton’s graduation ceremonies, and so far I have been blown away by the beautiful wide open expanses, particularly Staffenson Prairie. I have been fascinated by the small prairie remnants that remain in scattered areas throughout the landscape, and am working on learning the names of some of the key species (leadplant, tall bluestem and short bluestem, brome, veiny pea, and many others).
The question that has most caught my interest is the interaction between aphids and ants, particularly as it has been recorded in the Common Garden. I would love to know more about this potential new species, such as: Are the Echinacea-specific? Do their depredations vary among inbred vs outbred vs plants within the same remnant? Are they able to persist without the ants? What exactly is the nature of the ant-aphid interaction? How abundant are they in the wild? Tons of questions, so hard to choose! It gets even more complicated as you consider the little structures built for the aphids by the ants, as some entomologists believe that the ants use spittlebug spittle to construct them! However, I think I will narrow it down to a question that lets me spend the largest amount of time outside in the prairie remnants and the common garden.
I am also looking forward to gaining more field skills, such as using a GPS, looking at satellite maps, and learning about sampling mechanisms such as line transects and random searches.
Kensington is a marvellous little town, and I really like the feel of it. While I have not recovered from my sleep debt incurred at Carleton, I intend to explore the surrounding landscape as soon as possible. However, I would like future Team Echinacea members to know that the K-Town bar offers 2$ burgers on Thursdays. Incredible deal!
Hello everyone! My name is Mimi Jenkins and I’m an REU student with Chicago Botanic Gardens. I am from Pittsburgh, PA where I am a senior (one more semester!) at the University of Pittsburgh double majoring in Environmental studies and French lang/lit and a certificate in Global studies. This is my first real experience spending more than one day in the Midwest and I love it so far. The wetlands and prairies out here are gorgeous and I feel very lucky to be experiencing a new and exciting place and working with such an interesting group of people on such a worthwhile and fascinating project. I have never been on such a flat land or in such a small town, but the flat topography makes for nice biking (hoping I can get my hands on a bike soon!) and the small town is a nice break from the city for the summer. I arrived in Chicago two weeks ago and after an introductory week for the REU program doing lab work on soil samples and such (not my cup o’ tea), I met Stuart, took pictures with the help of Jake Friedman of some of the Echinacea pollinators and visitors that are pinned and in boxes at CBG, and did a little research on the nesting habits of bees.
Here is the protocol we came up with for the picture-taking:Protocol for Taking Pictures of Insect Specimens.docx
Here is some of the info I found on nesting of bees commonly found on Echinacea:
Echinacea Pollinators nesting.docx
I am really excited about this field season and I wish I could stay longer! I am really interested in improving my plant and bee identification skills on the prairie, as well as my knowledge of statistics in analyzing data and applied ecology in general. I also hope that this experience will help me to hone in on what I want to focus on for graduate schools in a year or two. I am currently trying to think about what exactly I would like to focus on because everything sounds so cool but I am limited to less than 6 weeks of research so it must be a pretty precise question, such as: does one family or species of bee act as a more effective pollinator for Echinacea than others using the style persistence method, or what co-flowering species are the pollinators pollinating that also land on Echinacea by observing pollinators on other plants or looking at foreign pollen on Echinacea heads. I would like to work in the common garden and in remnant populations to get a good sense of how these questions might differ depending on the community diversity of the remnant and the health of the Echinacea population.
I went out wandering yesterday and I think some of the locals thought I was a crazy person for walking on the side of the road but until I can bike, I will explore by foot. I turned onto the first dirt road on the right off of Kensington Ave and found this pretty hillside prairie remnant at the end of the road. I wanted to go further, but the electric fence kept me from continuing. I saw a patch of something yellow flowering off in the distance. Along the path of the dirt road between two corn fields I saw what I think was brome grass, prairie rose, common milkweed, alfalfa and clover, and some others like thistles that I couldn’t identify. I saw a big white bird that Stuart told me today was an American egret. I also saw some more of those cool turquoise dragonflies that are in the common garden. I regret not bringing my camera with me because the view at the end of the dirt road was so pretty–there were relatively few trees and you could gently rolling green hills for miles.
Hi, my name is Ben Iberle and I’m going to be a junior Biology and Music major at Grinnell College in Grinnell, IA. I was born in Seattle, lived in the Willamette Valley of Oregon for nine years, then finished off the job in Vancouver, WA, right across the mighty Columbia from Portland. I love the Northwest, I love backpacking and hiking through it. I love the prairie, too, and I wish there were better places to backpack through big bluestem. I play ultimate frisbee, soccer, saxophone, and Scrabble. I think Kraken is my favorite word.
Hi, I’m Julie Stutzbach from Pitman, NJ- a small town near Philadelphia in the southern part of the state. Presently, I am a Bio major at Beloit College where I run cross-country. About a month ago, I returned from Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands where I studied Ecology, Evolution, Botany, Conservation, and assisted Luis Vinueza with a research project on algal distributions. Last summer, I worked at Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook, NJ on a Botany Invasive Species team trying to control some invasive plants in the park such as Mullein, Autumn Olive, and Tree of Heaven. I especially enjoyed the cut and stump method using chainsaws. You can see me sawing down a Tree of Heaven on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cAzu5XQLF30. I am especially interested in Ecology, Botany, and Conservation science making the Echinacea team a solid match for me. After graduating, I want to see as much of the world as I can and then continue on to graduate school.
I was born and raised in western Nebraska, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Nebraska Wesleyan University, spent a year working at the University of Washington herbarium, and will be attending the plant biology and conservation program at Northwestern in the fall. I grew up on the prairie, so it’s close to my heart, but I love everything plant-related, including eating them. I’ve been a vegan for seven years, but when I’m not reading the labels on food packaging, I like to read, sew, and BAKE.
I’m currently attending the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington, VT and will be a Junior next year. I am majoring in Environmental Science with a concentration in Water Resources. Burlington is a great little city. It is progressive and there is so much going on for such a little place…well, it is the biggest town in VT. There are so many great restaurants and shops and locally grown/made is a huge thing there!
I am from “Clover Valley” Minnesota. You won’t be able to find that on a map…but it is somewhere in between Duluth and Two Harbors a bit inland from the lake. Lake Superior is awesome and if you haven’t been to the North Shore and the Boundary Waters you definitely should at some point in your life.
Hello Echinacea fans!
I’m Christine… and I’m in the Plant Biology and Conservation master’s program at Northwestern University.
Here are some things I saw at the grocery store yesterday:
1. 40 jerky sticks vacuum-sealed together
2. A jerky gun (Fast on the draw, according to to the package)
3. Fireworks
I feel so un-American, not owning any of this.
As the crew posts profiles of themselves, certain aspects of people’s personalities are inevitably left out. Our complex identities are unable to be fully described in a few short paragraphs. In an attempt to fill some of these holes, I present Julie Nicol.
Julie displays her talent.
Who would have known there are such wonderful animal impersonation talents in Team Echinacea. It appears that Jameson can do a killer cat impression too; we’ll work on getting it on camera.
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