New members of team Echinacea!
This week, we moved in our newest members—goats. The goats assist in weed removal. These animals are particularly good at removing the persistent and invasive buckthorn from patches around Hjelm. They’re also great for team morale. We have also had some time with Gretel and Stuart’s dog (Blue) and cat (Teenie).
Demography and surveying
Echinacea angustifolia is a long-lived perennial, but we are unsure how long they actually live. To track individual plant lifespans, we “demo” every season. This marks the 30th year of demography data for the Echinacea Project!
This week, we have made good headway demo-ing and surveying the remnant prairie field sites. As a team, we have taken demography on over 300 plants in the past two days. Our high school and REU students practiced their echinacea spotting, visor usage, and GPS skills.
Pollinator projects
REU interns Grace and Kyra have solidified their experimental design on their pollinator mark and recapture project. We used nets and vials to capture local honey bees as practice before we move on to bee populations in the remnants. To mark them, we placed the bees in our constructed “bee plungers”, easing them to the top of a mesh-covered tube, where we could them use paint marks to place tiny dots on their abdomens. The order and color of these dots will allow Grace and Kyra to keep track of each individual bee that they capture throughout the project.
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