Who needs a sauna when you have the great outdoors? Yes, it was another hot and sticky day in Kensington, and we took it on and beat it. This morning, Katherine, Jill, and Lydia went to several remnants while Katherine used Sulu, the GPS, to find last year’s and this year’s flowering plants to use for ant and aphid surveys, and Lydia performed crosses on several plants at East Elk Lake Road and Around Landfill. Bug Catcher Kelly and Bug Catcher Andrew used Sweepnet in the Common Garden to collect pollinators. It was super effective! Shona and Maria were found over at Hegg Lake performing/analyzing crosses on echinacea and dicanthelium. This afternoon (or rather, last afternoon), a number of us continued measuring all the plants in the Common Garden. We’re 1/4 done!!!

Despite the heat and humidity, Friday was yet another productive field day for Team Echinacea.

This morning everyone worked on their individual projects. Since my pitfall traps are ready to go, Greg and I placed pollinator traps on different prairie remnants. Pollinator traps are these nifty –and apparently hard to come by– yellow bowls that you fill with soapy water. Traveling from remnant to remnant, we also discovered that there’s a giant hole where the landfill prairie remnant used to be…

Later this morning, equipped with buckets as chairs, Greg and I headed up to one of the hills around Hegg Lake to observe some large soil-nesting bees. After an hour of watching, we saw two bees land in different holes, but no bees emerge. We’re not sure whether these bees are solitary or eusocial.

I also scored some pictures of the arthropod life on Echinacea heads.

Here is the “fuzzy” Echinacea head from the Kittleson roadside. Echinacea styles typically shrivel when successfully pollinated and persist when unpollinated or pollinated with incompatible pollen. In the case of this poor plant, the “fuzziness” is caused by all of the styles persisting, indicating that this plant hasn’t been successfully pollinated yet.

After lunch, the team trekked out to the common garden (C1) to measure Echinacea that had been planted in previous years. Measuring each plant year after year gives us a sense of the fitness of the individuals. We recorded things like the number of basal rosettes, number of basal leaves, as well as the length of the longest leaf, insect presence, among a slew of other characteristics.

Greg and I took off a bit early from measuring to go collect the pollinators from the traps we set out earlier in the morning. Also, Shona made a beetle friend! We’re still trying to figure out what exactly this little guy is and I’ll post it once we figure it out.

I realize that most of these pictures are sideways and I don’t know how to fix it at the moment. All of them were rotated the right way when I uploaded them…go figure.

Here are two of my Echinacea heads at Hegg Lake, bagged to exclude pollinators and thoroughly flagged to help protect them from being mowed.

This morning we split our time between work on individual projects and observing phenology in the common garden and at Hegg Lake.

I spent my morning at Hegg Lake again crossing the E angustifolia and E paliida that I painted yesterday. And when Gretel arrived to do phenology at Hegg Lake and pick me up she found a new E pallida in its first day of flowering!
Andrew observed his first pollinators on Echinacea with a video camera, and even managed to catch a few for specimens, as well as working on phenology in the common garden.
Kelly went out to observe phenology in some of her remnants, and is starting to see many flowering heads.
Lydia went to make her first compatibility crosses, but had a few problems with cross contamination so will have to make more crosses tomorrow.
Jill and Katherine GPSed the pitfall traps they had set up earlier at Staffanson and Nessman as well as helping with phenology.
Maria had another early morning at Hegg Lake learning about Dichanthelium pollination and found out that Dichanthelium has two sets of anthers.
Greg Dierson also arrived this morning, and will be joining us for a while.

After a long lunch Gretel and Stewart explained the procedure for measuring plants in the common garden, and we completed the first few hours of what is going to be a lot of searching for and measuring plants. Of course, we also got to stand outside and enjoy the day, which thankfully wasn’t quite as hot or humid as yesterday.

Here’s my summer project proposal explaining my work with the ants in the prairie. I still need to tighten up the methods a bit, so keep an eye out for updated versions!
JG_REU Project Proposal 2012.pdf