This week at the Echinacea Project we had a few visitors. On Monday and Tuesday Maddie, Grace and I worked hard in P2 to wrap up measuring and ran into an abundance of different creatures. From frogs, to spiders, a garter snake, and grasshoppers there was no shortage of helpers at the experimental plot.
Harvesting is in full swing as fall begins to roll around, also bringing many different caterpillars and monarchs along the way for our viewing pleasure. On Wednesday we had some real human visitors! Gasp! Riley and Amy W. came and paid Echinacea Project a visit and helped with the collection of measure data in P7 and P9 and contributed an abundance of harvesting in P1 and P8.
The gang back together!
In the final days of this week, we got an additional human visitor Aaron who came back to help us for a morning before returning back to school for the afternoon. We regaled on memories from this summer and thought about the ending of the season while reflecting on everything that has been accomplished by our mighty team of 8. Thousands of demo records, tons of surv records, measuring, and many healthy heads that have been harvested.
Aaron giving us the plot of Into the Woods in LOTS of detail.
For me, I spent many hours doing aster walks this week for my thesis encountering many different friends in the prairie along the way. This included monarchs, a mysterious caterpillar, many spiders, and a handful of wooly bear caterpillars (or as I like to call them wooly worms). The record for the most amount of aster species at a single site was broken this week at 27 different species at Staffanson E (previous winner was HeggW with 25).
Additional tidbit: We had found an injured monarch on the way to harvest and created a monarch motel for the little diva to recoup before hopefully taking flight again.
For my ongoing thesis research this summer I have been working hard collecting species presence data during this peak flowering time. For data collection I am doing a process where I go out to a specific prairie remnant or restoration and do a “meander walk”. This is where I walk along a winding path through a study area, systematically recording encountered species while trying to cover the most amount of area as possible with the goal of being able to create a comprehensive species list. The original project I had proposed “How prescribed fire affects species diversity and abundance in Aster plants in prairie remnants and restorations” has been scaled back drastically. This is in part due to time constraints, as well as working with a limited team this summer. The new focus moving forward is connected to the Minnesota Prairie Conservation Plan which is an initiative by MN Department of Natural Resources that is working to connect the small percentages of native prairies that are left in the state through a corridor. Multiple of the of the prairie remnants and restorations we do research in here at the Echinacea Project fall within or around this proposed corridor, but we don’t know if these remnants and restorations harbor rich plant biodiversity that could be beneficial to include on the proposed corridor. Therefore, I am investigating species presence of plants in the largest plant family found in prairies which is the Asteraceae in prairie remnants and restorations located in western Minnesota.
In terms of data collection, I have completed 15 remnant sites and 5 restorations of all varying sizes. Each sites offers a different array of plant species (many including our personal favorite Echinacea angustifolia, duh!). In the upcoming week site visits will be wrapping up and data organization will begin.
Since the last daily update on the 7th, Team Echinacea has been busy! Last week was the start of the mark recapture project lead by Grace and Kyra. Tallgrass prairie in Minnesota currently exists in fragmented and isolated remnants across the state. These plants suffer from inbreeding and reproductive failure due to a lack of compatible mates. Research has shown that prairie plants in these remnants still receive frequent visits from pollinators, but it is unknown if these pollinators are moving between fragmented prairie sites. Therefore, we as a team are studying the movement patterns of a common pollinator, Agapostemon virescens, using mark recapture techniques to analyze movement between isolated Echinacea angustifolia populations in prairie remnants. In order to do this Grace and Kyra have been teaching the team how to do a mark recapture pilot study where we mark Agapostemon virescens with three alternating colors of paint pens on their thorax. There has been many trials and tribulations with finding the right approach and making sure we are getting out quickly and promptly when the time is right, but we are learning and on the right track, and have the beginnings of a great data set!
An update on projects in our remnants sites is also in store. We have also been working on total demo at numerous sites. Our objectives for surveying remnant Echinacea angustifolia populations are twofold this year: Document the spatial location of each flowering plant in every remnant using a GPS unit, and Collect demographic data about the Echinacea plants in each population. Total demo gives us a valuable glimpse into the lives of non-flowering Echinacea including factors that influence survival and population growth. The team has been working hard and taking some exceptional data this year. We’ve even found a few plants with a tag in the 500’s meaning they are plants that we’re originally planted at the start of the Echinacea Project. Now those are some long-lived perennials! We’ve also been working on staking, demoing, and decapitating Echinacea pallida over at Hegg Lake. Echinacea pallida is a species of Echinacea that is not native to Minnesota. It was mistakenly introduced to our study area during a restoration of Hegg Lake WMA, and we don’t know how it may impact our local Echinacea angustifolia so we decapitate it to stop the spread. Be gone pallida!
Finally, for the experimental plot update we’ve been working on adding twist ties to flowering Echinacea heads in plot P1 to get them ready for measuring. Measuring is going to look a little different this year as we are not looking at phenology like we have done in previous years, but I will let Maddie D. discuss that in a future post!
Bonus: currently writing this after being rained in for the afternoon where Gael and I (Maddie S.) were working to stake the transect at Staffanson to get ready for total demo there soon!
This morning most of the team met Jared! He gave us a really nice, knowledgeable, and interesting talk about TOTAL DEMO. We headed to tower to start our introduction to TOTAL DEMO, we as a whole found that it’s really easy (mostly because of the low number of flowers and the fact that it wasn’t 85 degrees) I think we all enjoyed not only learning more about TOTAL DEMO but also being able to do it!
After doing Tower we headed to East of Town Hall to keep doing TOTAL DEMO, and were met by Shawn Papon a worker for US fish and wildlife and he happily explained to us their efforts to restore prairie remnants and how he was so excited to finally meet someone in our team! Shawn said how he has heard of us but never had the opportunity of meeting any of us!
After East of Town Hall we headed back to Hjelm for lunch, and currently we all are working on independent projects while in the watch for a big storm or even hail. Not all of us are excited for hail (I am) Well that was the daily update, I hope you liked it and THERE ARE MORE TO COME SO KEEP READING!
I attached some interesting pictures!
Two Echinaceas tangled with each other.The team with Jared at Tower doing TOTAL DEMO.“Freaky” Echinacea found by Aaron.Sky picture taken by Maddie D.
New members of team Echinacea! This week, we moved in our newest members—goats. The goats assist in weed removal. These animals are particularly good at removing the persistent and invasive buckthorn from patches around Hjelm. They’re also great for team morale. We have also had some time with Gretel and Stuart’s dog (Blue) and cat (Teenie).
Demography and surveying Echinacea angustifolia is a long-lived perennial, but we are unsure how long they actually live. To track individual plant lifespans, we “demo” every season. This marks the 30th year of demography data for the Echinacea Project! This week, we have made good headway demo-ing and surveying the remnant prairie field sites. As a team, we have taken demography on over 300 plants in the past two days. Our high school and REU students practiced their echinacea spotting, visor usage, and GPS skills.
Pollinator projects REU interns Grace and Kyra have solidified their experimental design on their pollinator mark and recapture project. We used nets and vials to capture local honey bees as practice before we move on to bee populations in the remnants. To mark them, we placed the bees in our constructed “bee plungers”, easing them to the top of a mesh-covered tube, where we could them use paint marks to place tiny dots on their abdomens. The order and color of these dots will allow Grace and Kyra to keep track of each individual bee that they capture throughout the project.
The project I will be working on this summer is transplanting and growing Comandra umbellata with either its field host or with a Galium boreale plug. Today, I prepared the growing container for the plants. We leveled off the ground, drilled holes in the container, cut and placed the drainage tile, and purchased river rock, black dirt, and beach sand, which we used to fill the container. See pictures below.
The next step is to decide which sites and which plants we are going to collect. Finally, we will plant the plants in the growing container and record observations about their growth.
Yesterday Team Echinacea took the afternoon to do some transplanting in P8. We planted 4 different species: Dichanthelium leibergii, Solidago missouriensis, Bromus kalmii, and Carex bicknellii. All of these species we want to establish in P8 because seed collection is very difficult and by starting plants from plugs we hope to establish enough plants to be able to successfully collect seeds to distribute in other areas of the experimental plot. These species are of interest to prairie restorationist and could serve a basis for future projects by members of the Echinacea Project. Solidago missouriensis are a colonel species but flower infrequently making them hard to collect seed from. In the past we have had another member of team Echinacea research Dichanthelium leibergii and could be used as a great focal species to conduct a future study on pollination biology.
The transplanting yesterday also served as good experience for folks to come together and design a plot together, get experience flagging out a new plot, as well as give them good experience with planting different types of plugs in different settings. Everyone did a great job in working together and delegating tasks and got 120 plants planted in only ~90 minutes!
Planting List:
Species
# of plugs planted
Dichanthelium leibergii
40
Solidago missouriensis
20
Bromus kalmii
30
Carex bicknellii
30
Bonus Update: The robin babies are growing up and getting big enough to watch while at lunch. Soon enough they’ll be off on their own!
Maddie and Kyra went to two remnant sites in Aanenson and West Aanenson to observe individual characteristics and compare the differences between the two sites and transects within. The transects at both sites were located on a natural hill, however the transects at West Aanenson were closer in proximity to a roadcut. Among both sites, it did not look like there were any recent burns. We observed more echinacea plants among transects in Aanenson in comparison to the transects in West Aanenson. Both sites seemed to have no history of agricultural use, though there were active corn crops across the road. We observed a larger diversity of plants at the Aanenson site, and we hypothesize that this is due to a difference in land management techniques as sites are owned by different agencies, though overall there are more similarities than differences between the two sites.
We saw many different plants at the different sites including:
Today was the first day of total demography! Team Echinacea started as a whole group at Tower, a remnant prairie site, where Jared gave an overview of total demography. Team Echinacea learned important skills such as communication and collaboration. After total demography was finished at Tower, one group headed to Martinson Approach and another went to East of Town Hall. Echinacea angustifolia pollen has seemed to wind down in the past few days. Today, Grace and Rebecca collected the remaining pollen from the last flowering plants. In the afternoon, everyone had personal project time!
It’s heating up in western Minnesota! Temperatures and humidity were high today. In the morning, much of Team Echinacea performed the pollinator observations we learned about yesterday with Dr. Ison. These involved recording the pollinator with a camcorder, describing its activities, and attempting to ID to morphospecies level.
Lots of echinacea in bloom at Torgeson north.
In the afternoon, emergence trapping crews had a great session of deployments and retrievals, while others worked on phenology in the common garden plots, and others gathered nectar. It’s exciting to see new species starting to bloom: two major species of prairie clover are just getting started, as is the wild bergamont and wild licorice.
Daleapurpurea, or purple prairie clover, in bloom at Hulzbos CRP north.
Once everyone was back from the field, we enjoyed some ice cold watermelon and headed home. Another great day in the field!
