It’s an exciting time to be a demographer with the Echinacea Project… We are 69.3% done with total demo! We’ll start today with a team effort to knock out Landfill, which is one of our last big sites! Stay tuned to see how much progress we make!
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You’re grasping a vintage palm pilot, When a Hoverfly lands! And while it Licks salt and tastes ya Record echinacea With palm sweat, palm tears, palm pilot  We made excellent progress with total demo this week! Just check out our total demo-meter! It’s filling up quickly! Hooray and happy Friday to all!  This Just in- After a lengthy stint of measuring in P1, Team Echinacea finally completed all rows on the morning of Tuesday, August 8th. Hoots and hollers rang out near Tower Rd. at approximately 11:30 am. Wyatt Mosiman, who made a valiant effort in measuring and contributed much speed and determination to the project, echoes the general excitement of finishing. However when asked to comment, her only remarks were “Ouch, my knee”. Team Echinacea would like to thank some P1 regulars that aided in the process, such as the giant field spider, the giant katydid with “face hands” and the tiny frog that found a home on Mosiman’s hat. Abby Widell, another member of Team Echinacea is excited to be done, but maintains a solemn understanding that there is still work to be done. “We’ll see you soon, P1”.  Friday was our first true day of total demo! After thorough instruction and review, Team Echinacea was off to the races as we PGORY’d our way through our first few sites! Already 6.9% done!  Today was Harrison’s last day with us 🙁 Stuart made a prairie-inspired cake to honor his time with the project. He is returning to teach young minds about ecological research. Farewell, Harrison, and good luck!  The team also conducted floral abundance surveys. Essentially, we want to see how many plants (and what kinds) may be associated with ground-nesting bees. That requires feet on the ground to estimate abundances and identify plants.  Lastly, a battle occurred today. While the crew did demography of echinacea plants- where we record data on this year’s flowering plants- I was stung by two wasps. Luckily, Lindsey was prepared to retaliate, though it wasn’t necessary.  All in all, farewells can sting, but at least there’s cake in the end. It was a busy morning here at the Station  Lonely visor seeks loving, careful, accurate data collector Grass so high Holes for hiding Today we helped dig soil cores for a “pitfall trap” project. The holes were dug near our ENRTF insect collection points and will grant greater insight on how burning prairies can affect insect population composition. The grass was pretty high, though, and we could hardly see the flags that had been placed earlier in the season! Rest assured, the holes were dug.  Also we did emergence traps. We always do emergence traps.  Also Daytona’s pockets are sweaty. If you stacked all the datasheets we use for pollen and nectar collection in one pile, it would circle the Earth 2.6 times. Even with all these datasheets, we’re happy to report we’ve made strides to stay organized and work efficently. Huzzah! Much hubub around Hjelm this morning. After a mishap with some duplicate datasheets, members of team echinacea put on their thinking caps to resolve some pollen and nectar mysteries. Using clues like handwriting, date, parsimonious location in tube stands, we put this case to rest. And we won’t get fooled again. The goats also arrived over the weekend. I can’t help but wonder if they had anything to do with this….  |
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