I Graduated University of Minnesota Class in 2022 with a B.S. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, and a B.A. in Classics (aka. Latin). Currently I am a graduate student at Northwestern University/Chicago Botanic Garden, pursuing a M.S. in Plant Biology and Conservation.
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Research Interests
I am interested in restoration ecology, in particular for grassland ecosystems like prairies. Bees have always had a special place in my heart, especially the ground-nesters! Much of my the data for my master’s thesis will be coming from Echinacea Project’s ENTRF study on bees and fire in prairies.
Statement
I grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and remained in the area until I moved to Chicago to start my M.S. When not in the field, I like to run, climb, get on the water in any capacity, make my own kombucha, read, and hang out with my pet python!
I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023 with a B.S. in Botany and Environmental Studies. Since then I’ve worked with the Echinacea Project as a research assistant and lab manager.
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Interests
I am interested in processes that impact mortality in plant populations, like woody encroachment. I also get to help manage our demographic database for Echinacea, and I’ve really enjoyed gaining skills in this area.
Statement
I am from Milwaukee Wisconsin and spent my undergrad years in Madison, WI where I got acquainted with some really special places that sparked my interest in prairies and plants
In my spare time I like to bake pies, read books, climb rocks, swim in lakes, and grow my collection of knitting works in progress!
As part of my recent independent study with Stuart and Northwestern undergrad Lena Parnassa this spring, I took an initial pass at analyzing the data from our 2023 emergence traps. These data are an important contribution to the broader ENRTF project, which is geared at understanding how ground-nesting bees respond to prescribed fire in prairies. This independent study enabled me to learn a great deal about database organization, coding, and collaboration between data scientists. Before we could run any of our analyses, we had to wade through quite a bit of data cleaning to ensure all our joins were functioning properly. This meant that we had to prioritize the bee analysis rather than the bycatch in our traps (millipedes, grasshoppers, and so forth), so stay tuned for more in that department! We were also working with abundance data rather than species data, as identifications of all the bees we caught in 2023 are still forthcoming. This means that some of the data points in our analysis are most likely incidental, but nevertheless, here’s a visual of what we found!
Figure 1: Mean bee catch rate by site type. Catch rate refers to the proportion of traps which had bees.
Figure 2: Bee catch rate by site. Catch rate refers to the proportion of traps which had bees.
Mean bee catch rate by burn history. Only three sites were 3 years post-burn in 2023, other burn treatments had 7-8 sites.
It looks like remnant prairies had more bees than restorations, but there’s a ton of variation across sites of the same land use type. It’ll be interesting to see what other factors may be associated with this variation, if any. Once we get those species ID’s and confer with our taxonomist, we’d like to tweak our protocol slightly going into this summer to maximize our chances of catching the bees at a given site. We’re considering stocking our traps with propylene glycol to better preserve specimens, trimming the vegetation around traps to make sure bees can find the entrance, and deploying later in the day to give foraging bees time to find their way back to their nests. Looking forward to kicking of the 2024 trapping season!
NOTE: Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
NU Work Study student, Maria, took on the task of xraying Andropongon samples for our project investigating fire’s impact on reproduction in big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii). We were about two samples in when we noticed that either this “lil box” containing samples was either very big or Maria had gotten very small.
Normal Boxes you’d find around our labMaria with giant box unlike things we commonly see
In one of our most pristine tallgrass prairie habitats that remain in west central Minnesota, an accident was made in its management (not by Team Echinacea or members of The Echinacea Project). A Minnesota non-native Echinacea, Echinacea pallida, was seeded into the habitat. These non-native Echinacea flower at a similar time to our native Echinacea angustifolia and we suspected that they could cross-pollinate. To test this, an experimental cross was conducted where pollen from donors of both species E. angustifolia and E. pallida were applied to stigma of receptive Echinacea of both species (so we have four crosses: Ang x Ang, Ang x Pal, Pal x Pal, and Pal x Ang). These crosses produced some viable seed and the progeny were grown in an experimental garden. We monitored the progeny’s survivorship, size, and reproductive effort (once they began flowering in the 5th year). These data will allow us to answer questions about the fitness of hybrid Echinacea compared to non-hybrids.
I made an aster graphical model that I am going to use to test hypotheses about the fitness of hybrid Echinacea. The graphical model contains survivorship (represented as ld or “living during”), whether the plant flowered (Flowering), and a count of the number of heads produced by a flowering plant (HdCt). A noticeable feature of the graphical model is the absence of flowering in 2019, this was because none of the plants in the experiment flowered that year. In the previous year, the first plant flowered and it was the only plant to flower, interestingly it was a Pal x Pal cross.
Members of Team Echinacea are freshly returned from a successful burn outing! We completed five experimental burns during our trip to western MN. A major win for the experimental design of our MN ENRTF funded research on prescribed fire and ground nesting bees as well as for conservation! Here is the scoop:
Late Friday night we got to the Hjelm House and were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis. In hindsight, I think this auspicious sighting boded well for our good fortune in burning conditions.
On Saturday morning we headed to Torgeson’s to burn the northern unit. Because it was predicted to be a dry day, we got an early start and were ready to burn by 10:45. We got to see lots of spring flora before the burn: pucoons, violets, sedges, pussytoes, etc… These plants will be even happier next year. With help from Lee, the burn went very smoothly. Torgeson’s is a hilly site, so the burn was slope driven and we had a great view. Things are pretty greened up in the area, so the burn was quite smoky. USFWS, who were burning a big restoration right next door must have been burning cattails- look at that thick, brown smoke coming from the other side of the road. Almost like we are having bonfires at neighboring campsites. Cute!
Jared secures the break at torgen before we stand back and watch the fire burn out.
Next we ventured into Grant County. No burning there- and if you’ve been following along that may not be a surprise to you. So it was back to Douglas Co. After lunch the crew headed to hutch to burn the western unit. Another Hilly site. We prepped our breaks and were ready to go! Burn number 2 down!
Sunday was a no-burn day because wildfire smoke from Canada was hanging over many counties in MN. A great day to get work done on the porch and venture into Morris to revisit old haunts. We anxiously awaited the next day’s updated report on burn restrictions.
Monday morning we got the go ahead to burn in Grant county!! We called in our backups (former team members Daytona and Liam plus a few of Liam’s friends) and headed to Yellow Orchid Hill West to train our first time burners in at a smaller site. The wind was squirrely but our burn was successful and we were just a hop, skip and a jump away from the revered hulze unit. After 3 failed attempts, was this finally our day?
Stuart and Jared watch the last flames burn out in the center of hulze.
Yes! Drive down highway 55 and you will see for yourself! A hilly expanse of charred earth! A sight for sore eyes after the last burn way, way back in 2003.
By this time, restrictions were lifted in Douglas Co. and the crew headed to Nice Island for a final burn before calling it a day and heading back to the farmhouse. Over Jean’s rhubarb cake we envisioned a utopian or maybe dystopian future on team Echinacea where we have a high tech call center and everything is drone operated. We’ll keep you posted on the call center and the rest of the burns we hope to get done this season.
Chicago Botanic Garden volunteer and community scientist Allen Wagner just counted his 1,500,001st Echinacea fruit today. Allen counts fruits of plants from science projects that shed light on pollination of purple coneflowers in experimental plots and in natural prairies. Allen has collected data for the Echinacea Project research initiative since 2017 to help us learn about the effects of prescribed fire on plant reproduction and about the magnitude of inbreeding depression in fragmented prairie populations.
Thank you Allen for your dedicated service to the Echinacea project, to advancing science, and to the conservation of prairie habitat!
Alan has been a volunteer at the Chicago Botanic Garden for 19 years and has been working on the Echinacea project in the plant reproductive biology lab at the Chicago at the plant conservation sign center since 2017. For his dedication, and speediness, Allen has been invested as the Count of Achene County and CEO of Echinacea Inc. What’s next… President of the Echi-nation?
NB. ‘Achene’ /uh-keen/ is the technical term for an Echinacea fruit.
Hello my Big BlueFamily, sorry for my lack of an update last week! Totally slipped my mind. Weighing is done, and the dataset is almost ready, I’m super excited!! People were kind enough to finish weighing for me because I am highly allergic to my study species…. oh well. We are moving on to concreting the question I want to ask and my hypothesis. Currently I have two different questions that I need to decide between. One is looking at the impact of black smut fungus on reproductive effort as measured by seed output, and the other is looking at the difference in black smut fungus’ impact on plant health between low and high density areas. There’s a lot of variables here that I need to figure out, like how pollination impacts seed output, as well. Next week I believe the dataset will be ready and I will be able to start my analysis, which is exciting!
The goal of this second data exploration was to determine the number of plants living in 2023 in each cross type and their plant status (e.g. basal, flowering, etc).
Table 1: Number of plants of each plant status given cross type in 2023. Interestingly, 0 Ang x Pal individuals flowered that year. Pal x Pal crosses flowered most abundantly.
Additionally, we wanted to know how many plants flowered each year given their cross types.
Table 2: Number of flowering individuals per year given their cross types. Interestingly, Pal x Pal were the earliest to flower and most abundantly flowering. Pal x Ang crosses flowered more than Ang x Pal crosses.
There are so many interesting questions to ask within the study design of our MN ENRTF funded research on prescribed fire and ground nesting bees! We are lucky to collaborate with researchers in the area who are taking them on.
Justin presents his research at the MSU-Mankato research symposium
Justin Kjorness, undergraduate at Minnesota State University-Mankato, worked with Drs. Mrganka De and Matt Kaproth (and many more) to collect soil samples at our remnants and restorations this summer. He has since been asking questions about the effects of prescribed fire regimes on soil physical properties. He presented these results at the MSU-Mankato research symposium this week!
