In summer 2018, I harvested 80 seedheads from 12 remnant Echinacea populations (ALF, EELR, KJ, NWLF, GC, NGC, SGC, NNWLF, LC, RRX, NRRX, YOH) to study patterns of reproductive fitness. I sampled heads in two ways – (1) I randomly selected 20% of the individuals at each site (43 individuals) and (2) I randomly sampled up to 5 individuals from full factorial combinations of high, medium, and low spatial isolation and early, peak, and late flowering time (i.e., high spatial isolation/early flowering, high spatial isolation/peak flowering, etc.) across all sites (37 individuals).
In January 2019, I dissected seedheads that I collected from the NW sites (ALF, EELR, KJ, NWLF, GC, SGC, NGC, KJ, NNWLF). I extracted the achenes by row to observe temporal variation in seed set within heads. I x-rayed the achenes and assessed seed set in January.
Xray images that show whether achenes contain embryos or not
Products: Check back with the flog for preliminary results and annual reports.
You can read more about reproductive fitness in remnants, as well as links to prior flog entries mentioning the experiment, on the background page for this experiment.
Inbreeding has negative effects on Echinacea, leading to reduced survival andfitness. In isolated populations, populations could benefit from genetic diversity introduced by mating with individuals from other populations (“outcrossing”). However, gene flow from other populations may compromise a population’s adaptation to its local environment. Amy Dykstra designed an experiment to test how mating with individuals from other populations affects Echinacea fitness. In the summer of 2008, Amy and Team Echinacea performed 259 crosses between individuals randomly selected from 6 of the largest remnant populations. That fall, Amy planted the offspring of these crosses (15,491 achenes) into an experimental plot at Hegg Lake WMA.
Every summer, including 2016, we measure plant status, number of rosettes, number of leaves, and length of the longest leaf of the individuals in the plot. We also note damage (herbivory) to the leaves.
Hegg Lake WMA (Amy’s plot is visible on the horizon to the right of the lake)
Data collected: We collected plant fitness measurements (plant status, number of rosettes, number of leaves, and length of longest leaf) electronically.
GPS points shot: We shot points at all surviving plants (and a few that we couldn’t find this year, but will check next year) in the experimental plot, which will make finding and monitoring these plants much more efficient in the future. The points are stored in ‘AMYSCROSSIG_20160712_SULU.tsj’ and some rechecks to those points are in “AMYSCROSSING_20160830_SULU.tsj’.
Products: Read about Amy’s analysis of the interpopulation crossing experiment in her flog post from last summer.
You can find more information about Amy’s experiment and links to previous flog posts regarding this experiment at the background page for the experiment.
Seedlings are marked with toothpicks to make them easier to find the following year
In 2008, Amy Dykstra began an experiment designed to assess the effects of inbreeding and outbreeding on small isolated populations of Echinacea. Inbreeding can result in the fixation of maladaptive alleles in populations and experiments by Team Echinacea have shown that the offspring of related Echinacea individuals have reduced fitness (Wagenius et al. 2010). In some cases, a population may benefit from new genetic material introduced by cross-breeding with another population. Alternatively, outcrossing may result in “genetic swamping,” where the adaptation of individuals to their local environment is compromised by gene flow from other populations.
In the summer of 2008, Amy and Team Echinacea performed 259 crosses between individuals randomly selected from 6 of the largest remnant populations. That fall, Amy planted the offspring of these crosses (15,491 achenes) into an experimental plot at Hegg Lake WMA. She weighed the achenes to estimate the success rate of the crosses and found that 40% of the achenes contained embryos. The experimental plot is divided into three blocks and achenes from each cross were divided into three groups. Amy sowed one group per cross in each block, randomly assigning location within the block.
Every summer, we measure plant status, number of rosettes, number of leaves, and length of the longest leaf of the individuals in the plot. We also note damage (herbivory) to the leaves.
Start year: 2008
Location: Hegg Lake WMA
Products:
Dykstra, A. B. 2013. Seedling recruitment in fragmented populations of Echinacea angustifolia. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Minnesota. PDF
Overlaps with: Dykstra’s local adaptation, inbreeding experiments– inb1 and inb2
Link to flog posts: Read updates and annual reportsabout this common garden experiment on our flog (field blog) as written by members of Team Echinacea.
In May 2014 I graduated from Colorado College with a B.A. in biology with a focus on Organisms, Evolution & Ecology and a minor in environmental issues. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago where I got to know about tall grass prairie and oak savannahs. I enjoy traveling the world and learning about new cultures and ecosystems.
Research Interests
Ison & Wagenius found that seed set in the bottom florets of Echinacea angustifolia is lower than that of the top florets. This summer I am interested in investigating factors that may contribute to this finding. I will explore temporal differences in the style persistence of both groups of florets. I will also observe frequency of pollinator visitations for each set. I am very interested in learning how the differences in phenology of florets within a single Echinacea angustifolia head may impact gene flow in fragmented prairie habitat.
Junior biology and studio art double major at Gustavus Adolphus College.
I am very exited to be a part a the Echinacea Project this summer. I hope to gain experience working in the field and enjoy the summer. I am interested in genetics and the gene flow of plants. As of this post, I believe I will be continuing the research done by Katie Koch and Andrew Kaul looking at the efficiency of pollinator on Echinacea angustifolia.
My previous research experience was examining the proteins of the Kinetochore complex in Saccharomyces cerevisiae with regards to chromosome transmission fidelity. Through this I helped develop a protocol for a electrophoretic mobility shift assay.
I grew up in Montana, but spent my later years in Eau Claire WI. I enjoy reading, a good video game, running and yoga. I also spend my time working on art; my favorite mediums being ceramics and found art. I recently put on a small solo show at my school titled “The Alchemist.”
My current research focus is to understand and quantify ecological and evolutionary consequences of habitat fragmentation for the prairie plant Echinacea angustifolia. I enjoy working on this project because it helps plant conservation, it trains the next generation of scientists, and it advances basic science.
Conservation. Prairie plants, like many plants worldwide, live in habitat remnants that are now very small compared to the previous few thousand years. I’m interested in addressing practical questions such as: Will these small populations persist? Which factors contribute to population decline and how much? What are the best things people can do to help populations persist? We can apply what we learn about Echinacea to many other plants because Echinacea has many common traits. For example, Echinacea is a long-lived plant, like many other prairie plants, but not much is known about the population dynamics of such plants.
Education. I enjoy working with people at all stages in their education by teaching, mentoring, and advising. I am especially committed to working with students who are interested in ecological or evolutionary field research at the undergraduate or graduate level. I supervise undergraduate field research assistants every summer and advise graduate students through UIC and Northwestern University. I teach Conservation Genetics at several venues, including Northwestern University, where I am an adjunct assistant professor. I also teach a statistics class each year (Quantitative Methods in Ecology and Conservation). This class is a core course for the Graduate Program in Plant Biology and Conservation at Northwestern.
Basic Science. The practical questions that motivate my empirical research also raise new questions that push the frontiers of scientific understanding. Some of the issues we are trying to understand better include: 1) the relationship between spatial scales of habitat fragmentation and density-dependent gene flow, 2) interactions between genetic, spatial, and temporal constraints to reproduction, 3) dependence of fitness traits on ecological parameters that change over time (fires, insects, conspecific density). It is intellectually stimulating to try to understand the Echinacea system, where both ecology and evolution influence basic biological processes.
After spending a good while talking about our independent project and looking over the work of last year’s Bee Team, Denise and I have come up with a preliminary plan for the next two weeks, sure to be revised once we actually get out there and figure out what works and what doesn’t. We considered how many different topics might affect bee behavior, including home ranges and the quantity of pollen on an echinacea head, but we ultimately decided that observing flight distances in relation to local daily densities of pollen-presenting echinacea would be the best complement for the lab work we’ve just finished. How will bee flight patterns change throughout the season–will they fly farther than usual between two echinacea before and after peak flowering, causing beneficial gene flow, or will the extra distance between the echinacea heads cause the bee to move to a neighboring non-echinacea, reducing the chances that the pollen will reach another echinacea plant? Due to the late flowering the year our observation time has shrunk to just two weeks, but hopefully it will be enough time to catch pre-peak and at least part of the peak flowering behavior.
The key data we’ll want to gather during our observations are:
– species of bee
– the row/position/head of echinacea visited, and in what order
– any other plants species visited between echinacea visits, and approximate location
By combining this data with a daily map of pollen-presenting echinacea heads in the Common Garden, we’ll be able to chart the bees’ flight patterns and analyze their behavior.
Thanks to the time spent by last year’s Bee Team working out the kinks in their painting and observation protocol, we should be able to save a good deal of time by adopting their methods. So, following their lead, here’s the general plan:
Last year’s team suggested that 7:30 AM would be the best time to begin catching bees. Because of our reliance on others for transportation to the garden, this may or may not happen, but we will try to get started as soon as possible each morning. Using a row number randomly generated by our visor as a starting point, Denise and I will search for bees in that row plus the row to the west and two more to the east. When we find a bee on an echinacea head we will catch it with a net, place it in a vial, and label the vial with the row, position, and twist tie color. The vial will be placed in a soft-sided cooler underneath an ice pack so the bee can calm down while we continue searching.
Once we have a few bees in the cooler we will return to the original capture site, take the first bee out of its vial and place it on a plastic bag on top of the icepack. Using handy dandy paint holsters made out of eppendorf tubes and duct tape, we will place a small dot of paint on the bee’s back, being careful to avoid the wings and antennae. The previous bee team suggested applying the paint with a short piece of metal from a flag, bent, sanded, and taped to a stick, but we will probably have to make do with toothpicks for the first day or so. Once the bee is painted and has warmed up a bit, it will be returned to the echinacea head where it was collected and observations will begin.
For observations, last year’s Bee Team suggested having teams of 3-5 people, with one person recording data and the others a few meters back from the bee, standing in a circle. When the bee lands on an echinacea head, the observers will call out the color of the twist tie and, if they can, the specific position of the plant. If the bee is moving from plant to plant too quickly for the observers to check the position, one of them will put a stake in by the plant before moving on and the data recorder will check the position. Due to the difficulties voiced by last year’s Bee Team over consistently recording accurate start and stop times for the bees on each head, and because we plan to use paper forms rather than the visor this year, we will not be recording these times. We will, however, make note of the collection and release times, as well as the time at which we lose track of the bee.
According to this plan, it looks like the materials we will need are:
– bee catching nets
– vials (glass was recommended)
– sharpie & labeling tape
– soft lunch cooler (1 per group?)
– hard ice packs (2 per cooler?)
– clipboard, data sheets, and a pen
– duct tape/eppendorf tube paint holsters filled with acrylic paint and marked with each color’s 3-letter abbreviation
– painting apparatus (toothpicks, until we can rig up the metal/stick deal)
– plastic bag, to keep the bee dry on top of the icepack while we paint it
– flags for marking echinacea if the bee is too fast for us
Things that we probably will not want:
– bug spray
– eye patches
– cement shoes
The frequency of bee sightings has slowed down in the past couple of days, but in the mean time we have been typing up our updated protocols, and begun looking at the data that we’ve collected. Read on for detailed protocols, the musings of this year’s Bee Team, and tips for next year’s Bee Team.
Bee Tracking
After we had painted a sufficiently large number of bees, we transitioned to tracking their flight paths between Echinacea heads. Our goal with this project was to obtain data that would allow us to determine average flight path distance of the pollinators between heads and therefore get a better idea of gene flow within the garden, and also to see if we could estimate the home range size for individual bees.
Our protocol for tracking bees didn’t undergo too many changes from the initial version. The biggest challenge that we ran into was keeping up with the bees both visually and in terms of taking data. We updated the visor form several times to increase the efficiency of the data taker. The current form seems to work well, although we’ve considered the idea of taking data on paper. It would also streamline data processing if the visor/paper form could assign and group each flight series by an ID number.
We found that it was most effective to work in groups of at least three, and up to five. One person would be data taking on the visor, and the others would be visually following the bee. It was best for the trackers to stay back a couple of meters from the bee so as not to scare it, and for the trackers to be spread in a circle around the bee, so that it could be tracked in any direction. When the bee left the flower, the trackers would call to the data taker that the bee had left the head, so that they could prepare a new data point in the visor, and would then call out the new plant coordinates and twist-tie color. If the bee visited multiple heads on one plant, the second, third, etc. twist-tie colors were recorded in the notes instead of calling up a new form every time. If the bee was lost for more than ten seconds, we marked lost track, and then would resume with a new flight ID for the next bee, even if it was the same bee that we had previously been tracking.
Because we got all the details of this protocol worked out after the peak flowering, there weren’t many bees still in the garden when we were searching for them. As a result, we tended to concentrate our searching for bees in the ’96 garden where the flowering plant density was the highest. This made the most efficient use of our time, since we weren’t randomly walking rows with few or no flowering plants, but resulted in a data set that is concentrated in one place. Therefore, our data, especially when it comes to home range estimates, may be inaccurate, as we concentrated our time in the one area.
Miscellaneous Info
We the members of the Bee Team (formerly Team Binocular) have done our best to track, mark, and record the position of bees in the common garden for the last several weeks. Our first suggestion is that you start early. This year we got a late start compared to the Echinacea flowering. We also had to figure out all the protocol from scratch as well so in the future this project can get organized shortly before flowering starts to be ready when flowering starts. Pollen set and bee activity are closely related and are both tied to weather.
After trial and error, we found that the best time for finding bees in the common garden was right around 7:30. Agapostemon virescens tended to be out earlier in the morning while the Melissodes were out later. We hoped that by getting out early we would be able to find A. virescens to track, but because of the late start of our project, we were unable to find any. Cold weather and windy weather both diminished the number of bees visiting flower heads. Wind also made it difficult to track bees because when the bees took off from the flower head they were caught by the wind and blown away.
Team Echinacea seeks a MS student who is enthusiastic about getting a jump start on their thesis during the summer 2024 field season before matriculation into the fall 2024 program. This student would be advised by Dr. Wagenius in the Plant Biology and Conservation program at Northwestern University.
We seek someone who is broadly interested in working on ecology, evolution, or conservation biology of plants or insects in fragmented prairie habitat. The opportunity provides summer funding to conduct fieldwork, lead projects, and build on existing infrastructure to develop a research project at our study site in western Minnesota.
The questions that motivate Team Echinacea are both applied and fundamental. We ask questions about how we can better conserve prairie plants and pollinators with goals of generating concrete answers for stewards, managers, practitioners, and policymakers. Our project also addresses some very fundamental research questions and contributes to better basic scientific understanding of biological processes. Our lab centers mental health, work-life balance, and values diverse perspectives; we foster a stimulating, supportive atmosphere for lab members to learn from and teach one another.
Potential Projects include:
Effects of prescribed fire on the abundance of floral resources for pollinators
Effects of habitat fragmentation on long-lived perennial plants, including porcupine grass (Hesperostipa spartea)
Role of nectar production in pollination biology
Effects of hybridization of a non-local species with a local native species.
Requirements Undergraduate degree in relevant field
Desired qualifications Competitive candidates will have training in community ecology, ecosystem ecology, restoration ecology and/or conservation biology. Candidates with strong field experience, evidence of leadership, communication skills, evidence of outreach and collaboration, and dedication to making science more welcoming to underrepresented groups will be viewed favorably.
Application materials and instructions If you are interested in this position please see the PBC website for more information on materials to send to apply and contact Stuart. Applications for the program are due February 15th.
Kristen Manion, NU MS student, graduated 2021 Thesis title: Where do bees build their nests? The influence of land-use history and microhabitat on nest presence of ground-nesting bees
Drake Mullett, current NU PhD student Dissertation title: The roles that parasitic plants play in prairie communities
Wyatt Mosiman, current NU MS student Thesis title: Heritability and selection of fire-stimulated flowering in an herbaceous perennial
Lea Richardson, NU PhD student, graduated 2022 Dissertation title: Investigating impacts of prescribed fire on flowering phenology and reproduction in grassland perennials
Applications for summer 2024 are closed. Check back next year!
The Echinacea Project is looking for an enthusiastic graduate or soon-to-be graduate for a 12-month paid internship starting in June 2024. We are looking to assemble a team of research interns with diverse skills and interests, and we encourage individuals with a bachelor’s degree in biology, botany, entomology, statistics, computer science, or a related major to apply. We especially encourage those who have had few or no research or training opportunities during college to apply.
This internship is a great opportunity for aspiring ecologists, conservation biologists, and evolutionary biologists to gain research experience and learn about the ecology and evolution of plants and insects in fragmented prairies. Read more general information about our field season!
Abby (research intern 2023) records the spatial location of an Echinacea plant using a GPS unit
Job description
As a research intern, you will contribute to ongoing research on the conservation genetics, reproductive biology, and demography of the prairie plant Echinacea angustifolia. Summer fieldwork occurs in western Minnesota, and greenhouse and lab activities are at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Interns will conduct an independent research project. This project may involve field research, germinating seeds in the lab, organizing and analyzing a dataset, developing computer software, or other activities depending on the intern’s goals and interests. Potential project topics include: flowering phenology, fire ecology, mating compatibility, plant-aphid-ant interactions, plant quantitative genetics, hybridization, software development, and plant-pollinator interactions.
Mia (research intern 2020-2023) harvests porcupine grass (Hesperostipa spartea)
As an intern, you will engage in many aspects of scientific research, outreach, and mentoring. Tasks during the summer include database management, experimental plot management, preparing data to use in the field (such as GPS paths), and discussing science with other interns. At the Chicago Botanic Garden, you will participate in a variety of research and conservation-related activities, attend seminars, and interact closely with conservation scientists, graduate students, interns, researchers, and volunteers associated with Plant Conservation Science at the Chicago Botanic Garden and the graduate program in Plant Biology and Conservation at Northwestern. Interns will spend time managing Echinacea Project volunteers and mentoring students. Tasks with volunteers include teaching protocols, answering science-related questions, and preparing samples so volunteers can collect data. In collaboration with the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Echinacea Project hosts a number of high school and undergraduate interns over the fall, winter, and spring. Year-long interns will mentor these visiting interns on independent projects and engage them in lab activities.
Desired skills and experience for all applicants include: experience using R, completing tasks independently and on time, communicating clearly in writing, paying attention to detail, and working effectively with people from diverse backgrounds. Other valuable interests or experience include but are not limited to: performing outdoor physical work in adverse conditions, computer programming, supervising community scientists, mentoring students, conducting artificial crosses, organizing and curating specimens, automating systems, conducting outreach, growing plants, and identifying insects. If you are interested, please apply and let us know what you can contribute and what you hope to learn!
Applications will be reviewed starting on 13 March 2024 at 11:59 pm CST and filled on a rolling basis. The salary starts at $16.50/h. Housing in Minnesota during the summer is included.
Send a cover letter, your resume, and a transcript (unofficial OK) in one email to echinaceaProject@gmail.com. Use the subject line: “12-month research intern application” and format your cover letter, resume, and transcript as pdf files. Begin each file name with your surname.
Review of applications will begin on 13March 2024 at 11:59 pm CST. We’ll accept applications until the position is filled. Be sure to include an email address and phone number where you can be reached in March.
You are welcome to apply to multiple positions with the same application. Please indicate which positions you are interested in on the form you submit with your application.
Members of groups underrepresented in science are particularly encouraged to apply. In order to be eligible for this position, you must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or permanent resident of the United States.
More information
First, read about our field season! If you have any questions, contact a team member via e-mail. Read about our lab and field activities on the flog and more about the project’s background. To learn more about fire and prairie plants, check out this video that we made.
Lindsey (research intern 2022-2023, right center) and Wyatt (research intern 2023, left center) clean Echinacea and Liatris heads with students and volunteers in the lab at the Chicago Botanic Garden
