Week 3 plans

Lots of plans for this week! Here are some highlights.

This week we will start systematic observations of Echinacea flowering phenology in the CG experiment. We want to know the first and last day of flowering for every head of every Echinacea plant in the CG. The main event early in the week will be to put a twist tie on every head that looks like it will flower. We will also put a flag near every flowering plant with its location on the flag. We have to get the locations (plant ids) correct and get it into a database. As of Sunday, four plants in the CG had started to flower, how many left to go? We will also record flowering phenology at Staffanson Prairie Preserve. We will observe many fewer plants, but it’s a long walk.

Under the supervision of DR, we will spend ~1h looking for more spittle masses on Ea in the CG.

Jennifer and Diedre are coming from IL this Sunday and will stay for the week. They will help set up the phenology flags. They also plan to collect tissue from plants in several remnants to do a population genetic study using microsatellites (DNA markers).

Daniel and Amy will make a plan for searching for aphids and juvenile plants in remnants.

Caroline will fill us in on her plans.

The competition of pollinators crew (M “floral neighborhoods” J, A “bee’s knees” G, K “style” G, A “the experimenter” H, and G “pollen from the source” D) will plan and practice for their project. Here are some things they will do…
Mimi: characterize floral neighborhoods
Amanda: catch bees, get pollen on slide
Kate: catch styles, get pollen on slide
Allegra: choose plants for experiment
Greg: order digital microscope cam & collect pollen (from the source)

GPS (maybe): Daniel & Amy.

What are we going to do about that tripod?