Today was a very busy day at the Plant Science Center!
We started the day rechecking our echinacea heads, to make sure we had picked out and counted every achene. Soon after, we had a meeting with Leah, who presented her research paper outline on the comparative success of a number of prairie plants in relation to burnings. It was very interesting to think about the restorative nature that fire can play in these ecosystems, and we spent a lot of time discussing her methods of presenting data as well.
Next up, we heard from Fabiany about his work in conifer fossils, their evolutionary significance as well as how they connected to his home country of Columbia.
Before lunch, we went through training and began working on classifying achenes through X-ray scans. After lunch, we brainstormed ideas for our individual (or group) projects that we’ll be focusing on for the next two weeks. We all have a lot of different areas of interest, from the impact of inbreeding to limiting factors on plant growth to flowering based on climate change. In addition, we all plan to work on our data processing/analysis skills through learning “R” and more. We spent the rest of the day doing some background research on our project ideas and more discussion of the scope and general plan for our projects.
Overall, it’s been a productive day! We are excited to hit the ground running next week on our projects.
Flog out,
Eli
Leave a Reply