Over 90% of flowering plants rely on insect pollinators for sexual reproduction. Pollination biologists often quantify pollinator effectiveness by counting the number of pollen grains a pollinator deposits on a plant’s stigma in a single visit. However, flowers in the Asteraceae, like Echinacea, are uniovulate, meaning that a there is just one ovule per style. Therefore, it theoretically only takes one viable pollen grain to fully set seed in an Echinacea ovary, which means the standard method of quantifying pollinator effectiveness may not be appropriate for Echinacea and other members of the Asteraceae. In this study, we wanted to estimate how many pollen grains are really necessary to set a seed in Echinacea angustifolia. We performed 60 hand crosses with varying levels of pollen deposited. Each cross consisted of nine total styles of which three were removed before the cross to get estimates of self-pollen deposition, and six styles were crossed with pollen from other flowering individuals. We then collected styles and stained them using fuchsin gel and to count the number of pollen grains using a compound microscope. We x-rayed the achenes, fruits, from the crosses to determine if a seed was present. Preliminary data shows that seed set varies with the pollen grains deposited. These data will advance our understanding of pollinator effectiveness in this uniovulate plant. By increasing our understanding of pollinator efficiency in the Asteraceae we can better predict the consequences of pollinator declines in fragmented habitats, such as the North American tallgrass prairie.
Post the Big Events you may think that the team’s trips to experimental plot two would be few and far between, well you would be mistaken. Zeke, Evan, Jennifer, and I (hereafter “Team CoWBee”) have been busy working there doing pollinator observations and a lot of painting. Today we went straight to Hegg Lake allowing us to get there while the bees were still sleeping. Zeke and Evan were busy watching the bees. Andy and Morgan joined us to work on phenology. While that was happening I was preoccupied with my independent project. What is my independent project you ask? Well, let me tell you!
Lunch with a view
In pollination biology, it is often thought that the more pollen grains a bee deposits the more efficient it is (the better it is for the plant). However, Echinacea technically only needs one pollen grain to make a seed. Once you consider that not all pollen grains are viable more than more may be necessary to ensure a seed is made. My question is how many pollen grains are necessary for there to be a 90% chance that the seed is made. How in the world am I doing this you may ask? Well, I must be the bee. Not literally but I need to deposit different amounts of pollen on styles and see if a seed is made. To deposit the pollen, I have been using toothpicks, a flosser picks, and a patience. Once I deposit the pollen I will come back remove the style allowing me to count the amount of pollen under a microscope. Today I spent the majority of the time being a bee, performing these hand crosses so that I can remove the styles tomorrow. My goal is to perform a total of 480 crosses (80 heads) (half of these are backups) today I did 54 crosses (nine heads).
Toothpicks aren’t only for hors d’oeuvres
Who uses flossers for their teeth?
A style under a microscope
Still, have a lot of work to do so until next time!
A rarely seen mammal in MN, dead or alive. This badger was along the roadside but didn’t appear to be hit by a vehicle.
Today was a busy day with groups going different directions. Phenology on P1, Bee photography at P2, insect pan traps, moving insect tents and a lesson on demography with a practicum test. Ryley getting accustomed to running the lycor which measures the photosynthetic rates and has the label micromole CO2/meter squared per second. How cool is that? The Echin Project seems to be flowing like a well oiled machine and the plants too. Tomorrow looks like it may rain so plans were made for Thursday to begin looking at some of the data/specimens we’ve collected over the weeks. Personally, i’m looking forward to Big Event 6: Contact 3-2-1. (I’m thinking of a word beginning with the letter B)
Good evening floggers. Today was an exciting day for Team Echinacea. Big Event 4: Revenge of the Bees occurred this morning out at p2. I unfortunately was unable to attend because I had to stake and move emergence traps. The weather was nice today so I imagine it was a fun time!
What p2 looked like from where I was this morning.
Today was my first day at a new site for the bee emergence tents. Yesterday I collected traps at Hegg Far West. Sadly, there were no bees yesterday. Today I staked and moved tents to Hegg North East with hopes of catching a bee in the traps tomorrow.
Tonight we had our weekly Journal Club. Mia picked an interesting paper titled “Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it matters” by Gagliano et al. 2014. Using the sensitive plant they showed that plants are able to show an elementary form of learning. We had a tantalizing discussion about the sentience and value of plants along with a discussion of the methods.
I would like to summarize the day from the perspective of my apartment’s egg consumption (we cooked up about 20 eggs today).
This morning me and Mia went out to Hegg lake to finish collecting data from Friday’s experiment on male fitness, and prepare for next week’s male fitness experiment (named: The big event 2: electric bugaloo). While we were there, Mia found a bird’s nest in the grass full of tiny chicks. They were very cute, so we chose to leave them alone rather than eat them. Once we finished, we went back to the roost, where I ate eggs for lunch (3 eggs down).
The bird’s nest at P2.
Mia found a spider hanging out on an Echinacea flower. It’s probably not a very good pollinator.
After lunch we played card games and Brigid made a beautiful chocolate cake (six more eggs down).
We decided it was too nice of a day to stay inside, so in the afternoon we went to Lake Carlos state park, to swim and play games, such as volleyball, and Kan jam (a Frisbee throwing game). We found out that Kristen played volleyball in high school, and Will’s overhand serve is hard to defend; also I can sometimes throw a Frisbee. We did not eat any eggs, while at the lake.
In the evening we returned to the roost. I made a stir fry with vegetables, chicken and 2 scrambled eggs.
I do not know what happened to the remaining 9 eggs (I’m sure they were put to good use); regardless I enjoyed a relaxing Saturday, with a perfect mix of Echinacea, team bonding, Frisbee, and eggs. Surely a good team eats eggs together (dietary restrictions allowing).
Today, Team Echinacea took a significant detour from our normal routine. Not only did we leave Solem Township on an adventure to Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge, but we didn’t even study Echinacea while we were there. No, instead we studied a member of the orchid family, the endangered western prairie fringed orchid.
Our trip north started early in the morning, with us leaving the comforts of Alexandria at 6:00 AM, in order to arrive at the site by 9:00 AM. Of course, a much-needed donut stop was had along the way. Once we arrived in the first of the two experimental sites, we got to work finding the prairie orchids.
Gretel teaching the team how to count flowers on an orchid
We do a full census of the prairie orchids that are on the experimental plots, which means we need to find every orchid that is within the boundaries of the study. And therein lies the challenge. The plants themselves aren’t necessarily too hard to find: big ostentations flowers, often with 5+ flowers on a plant. No, what is challenging is figuring out where one is within the experimental plots. The corner of every 10 meter by 10-meter plot is marked with a short wooden post, which, in tall grass and ankle height waters, at times, can be quite difficult to find. Of course, we learned to use our extreme geometry skills to locate the locations of where posts should be (as some posts simply weren’t there).
Little can one tell there are many plot marking posts within this picture
The ankle-deep water was much nicer that the occasion knee-deep water that criss-crossed the plots
All things considered, Team Echinacea had a very successful day as Team Orchid (or Team Platanthera, if you prefer). we found 584 plants within the experimental plots and got to see many new plants and birds that are not present in our Echinacea plots, like the showy milkweed and the upland sandpiper.
Get ready for tomorrow to hear all about the Big Event!
Hello Flog! Today was a great day out on the prairie. We got a lot of important things done, but more importantly, we had fun getting them done! Weather-wise it was a nice day, we were slightly concerned at lunch after a brief spurt of rain, but things cleared off and the beautiful weather held through the afternoon. While temperatures in western MN have gone down a bit, the mosquito population still seems enormous.
In the morning some folks worked on independent projects, a select few worked on planning a top secret project ‘The Big Event’ (flog post coming soon to an Echinacea project flog near you). I worked in experimental plot one with Kristen, Andy, Anna, and Michael to find and record all flowering heads, Its a big job but luckily not as big as experimental plot 2!
Kristen and Andy next to their prized flowering Echinacea
I took a break at about 10:30 to learn more about our brand new GPS unit named Darwin. This is an excellent investment for the project and will help us get a lot more field work done. It has many more useful functions than our GRS-1 units which seem to be terminally ill.
At lunch, we discussed the finer points of the 40-hour work week.
Post lunch many of us went back out to experimental plot 1 to find and record information on the Hesperostipaspartea that are planted near the Echinacea in that plot. Since it is a grass it can be difficult to spot, I was lucky enough to work with Zeke who seems to have been blessed with the ‘Stipa Sense’ or the ability to spot these plants from at least 2 miles away on a foggy morning.
This summer, I had the privilege of leading an exciting project investigating the effects of prescribed burns on plant communities in Minnesota’s prairies. Land managers commonly use prescribed burns to prevent the spread of woodlands and promote native prairie plants. While the positive effects on native plants have been shown, the impact on exotic flowering species remains unexplored. My research aims to fill this gap by comparing how prescribed burns affect the flowering of native and exotic species. Ultimately, I hope to provide land managers with insights on how to better use fire to protect and restore prairie ecosystems.
The data collection phase was a collaboration with the Echinacea Project’s floral assessment experiment, which seeks to quantifying the floral resources are available to pollinators at our sites. I was responsible for planning data collection routes and coordinating teams to survey across 42 sites. At each location, we identified and recorded the flowers present and estimated their abundance. This part of the project was the most rewarding aspect of my summer. Getting to know the individuals that make up the plant communities of Minnesota’s prairies gave me a deeper understanding of their unique ways of existing and how they come together to form larger prairie ecosystems.
Moving forward, I’ll be analyzing the data our field teams collected, comparing this year’s findings with last year’s to assess how plant communities change before and after burns. This comparison will allow us to track changes in species richness, diversity, and abundance before and after a burn event, providing a clearer picture of the role fire plays in shaping prairie ecosystems.
While there’s still plenty of analysis ahead, I’m excited to see where this research leads! A big thank you to the 2024 Echinacea team for an amazing summer—I learned so much and enjoyed many giggles, hijinx and things to make you think! Rah!
Team Echinacea finished Total Demo today! That was a big undertaking. We visited 2640 locations to search for Echinacea plants in our remnant sites. But we’re not done with our remnants yet. Today we started de-mopup or demopup. In the likely event that we missed a few flowering Echinacea, we revisit each site to do a thorough search. I am not sure if we are as thorough as this AI puppy mopping the floor, but we strive to find the Echinacea Plants that no one else will find.
This weekend Team Echinacea had nothing short of an adventure. Expecting good burn conditions on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and maybe even Wednesday, we packed our bags and headed northwest from CBG. After the quintessential falafel stop in the Twin Cities, we arrived at Hjelm around 9pm. Before we could hit the hay, however, we had one important issue to resolve: the farmhouse didn’t have any running water. We’d picked up some jugs of drinking water along the way, but we decided that it might be nice if everyone also got a turn to flush the toilet. So without further ado, we went and collected water from the roadside in 5 gallon buckets to have around for filling the toilet tank. This operation looked totally normal and chill.
Here’s the scoop.Water borrowers Abby and Ian make their getaway.
After eating breakfast and topping off the septic tank with pond water the next morning, we prepped for a burn at the hulze site. This involved filling water packs/buckets/tank, raking and mowing burn breaks, prepping radios, etc..
Jared plans out the burn on a whiteboard.Ian and I look on as Jared inspects our collection of water vessels.
Once we finished our prep work, we returned to Hjelm and had a hearty chickpea meal. Yum! A classic! I like to add salt and pepper and paprika and olive oil and spinach and hot sauce to mine. This is also when our reinforcements arrived. This was a bigger burn relative to most of our sites, a whole 15 acres, so help was appreciated. Thank you Amy and Brad and Amy and Colleen! Jared briefed us on the mission, and we got to hear the frustrating tale about how we’ve been skunked at this unit two years in a row. Every time we’ve tried to burn it, it’s been called off last minute for one reason or another. Last year there was allegedly too much smoke from Canadian wildfires and we were told no go. Will this year be different? Third time’s the charm, right?
Wrong. Once again, after all of our prep work was complete and we were ready to light a test fire, Stuart called in the permit and was told to hold off. The county was concerned about gusts over 25 miles per hour, though that’s not what we were measuring at the site. We waited hopefully for over an hour for a call back giving us the go-ahead, and eventually gave in to the fact that there would be none. So we packed up and headed back to Hjelm. There’s still hope for burning this unit later in the spring, but needless to say we were slightly grumpy.
To raise our spirits, we took a walk around the Wagenius property to scout out areas to burn the next day and check up on places we had burned in the fall.
Abby, Blue, Jared, Stuart, and Gretel walk through the southeast corner that we burned in November. Hope you like galium! They were plentiful here (as was brome).
For dinner, Abby, Ian and I made Abby’s chili recipe (the secret ingredient is farro (and paprika) (and dark chocolate) (and love)) and Stuart and Gretel made their cornbread. Yum again! I mixed my cornbread and chili together with butter and hot sauce and honey and, upon Abby’s recommendation, apple cider vinegar, which is now an essential chili condiment in my book.
I do something cooking related while Ian stirs the pot.
Having full tummies and hearts, we went to bed with the knowledge that Jared and Stuart were excited about burn conditions tomorrow, and thus, so were we. But you know who wasn’t? The state of Minnesota. That’s right, we woke up bright and early to find that the DNR had placed burning restrictions on much of the western part of the state, including the counties we conduct our burns in. That means another day with no burns. And we thought Sunday would be perfect! ARG. This forced us to take a step back and consider our options. We didn’t have a ton of other stuff to do in the field, and the forecast for the next few days was getting more dicey. So, with great reluctance, we made the call to head home early. We put away burn equipment, packed our vehicles, and were on our way.
Stuart helpfully supervises as Abby caries a 40 pound water pack down a flight of rather unforgiving stairs to store until next time.
Not wanting to end our trip on a sour note, we stopped by Staffanson Prairie Preserve on our way out to see who was flowering.
The crew peruses the prairieLook who’s awake! A pasqueflower!
We stopped in the Twin Cities for lunch, donuts, and to drop off Stuart’s truck at his parents’ place for them to have handy. For those of you keeping track at home, that means we have a 7ish hour journey to make in one vehicle that will be carrying 7 souls (one of whom is a dog). This made for a tight squeeze, but we made it work.
I tried to take a selfie to capture the coziness of the moment, but failed. Ian and I are prominent in the front, and you can spot Blue and Stuart in the back. Behind me are also Gretel and Abby, and Jared is in the passenger seat next to me
By midnight, we’d all made it back to our homes safe and sound. While we didn’t accomplish what we set out to do on this trip, perhaps, as Ian suggested, the real burns were the friends we made along the way.
