The cameras were over-heating filming under the hot sun all day: so Andy bought hats for all of them to wear.

These pictures are from the afternoon of July 5th. We were taking pictures for fluctuating asymmetry to be analyzed later to see how ray floret shape affects pollination. that afternoon we saw a cloud that bore a strange resemblance to the wu-tang clan symbol

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

white fuzzies

These are thorn hopper larvae. we have been calling them thorn hoppers. In the past they have been called black spikeys.

Below are close-ups of Echinacea leaf venation
this last one also has aphids as well as nibbles and holes

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are my daily photos

this first one is actually from yesterday

KAP took the kite w/ camera up over the common garden today so they could fine tune the procedure and technique for getting good aerial photos. I took these photos as I was helping put staples in the garden and change camera batteries


The little black speck half-way up the kite string is the camera
Stuart was holding down the kite.
the common garden is kind of half garden half prairie.

these pictures are from monitoring/measuring/demography/demo of the common garden. Basically it means finding each and every plant in the common garden and measuring and recording every aspect of them

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Download file

Posted by Gretel Kiefer at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A protocol for Team Video is in the early stages, and there are many aspects to consider. While it started slow, we have found a relatively quick and efficient system for placing cameras, taking down and storing cameras, and uploading videos. Unfortunately, many additional challenges await.

Watching the 2+ terabytes of footage will be a long and arduous task, and it is therefore key to plan well in these early stages. I believe the most important questions to ask at this phase are:

What data are we looking to collect?
With so much footage we have captured a lot of different things that we could potentially measure. We can see thrips on nearly every head we've recorded. We also have seen many ants, though typically of only two main species. Previous hypotheses about the roles of these ants have been posted, and the videos of the flowering heads would be a great resource for anyone wanting to find out more about them. As of now (though I'm not entirely sure as I haven't thoroughly consulted with the rest of Team Video) I believe we are only going to record information about the insects that visit the heads and not their permanent residents.

What is the most effective/efficient way to collect these data?
This project cannot be done quickly or easily. Every day that we record in the Common Garden we get about 7-9 hours of footage per camera. With ten cameras rolling that is 70-90 hours of footage to watch per day. If we record for 5 days in a week (not uncommon) we then have 350-450 hours. That's a freakin' lot of video! Efficiency is key, but as a wise man once said "We're looking to increase efficiency without losing accuracy".
It is at these questions that I hit a wall, and would appreciate the input of my fellow bloggers/fans of the blog. As of now we have been using a video player that has the capacity to fast forward at speeds up to 32x, where should the line be drawn? At some point well below the 32x speeds, we might start missing things. Some bees only remain on the flower for a second or two before leaving, and the watcher of these videos may not catch these visits. However, there is really no way to watch these videos at normal speeds and expect to finish before the end of the decade (let alone the end of the summer). Also, a question directed at fellow Echinacea team members; are there data that you would like to be gathered from these movies that I haven't mentioned? The ball has been passed into your court...

Posted by Colin Venner at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Good news for science at the Chicago Botanic Garden

The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation is giving $8 million to help build a new science building. The 35,000 square-foot building will house laboratories for the Garden’s research team, classrooms, an expanded herbarium, a plant science library, and an enlarged seed banking facility. Read the detailed press release.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kite Aerial Photography is not going well. Friday the 13th was a particularly bad day.

MORNING: In the morning Josh, Julie & I drove to NNWLF. We set out ground markers and got the kite up. After we got the camera up we realized that the remote control wasn't going to gain us much with the canon S70 because it take about 10 seconds between shots in the RAW mode. The interval on the timer is about 15 seconds. Then the camera battery ran out ARG. So, we went back to lunch.

AFTERNOON: Armed with fresh batteries we went back to NWLF and set out the ground markers, got the camera up, and took a lot of shots. Or so we thought. When we returned I found that there were no photos on the card. We're not sure what happened. Perhaps the LED didn't trigger the sensor. The problem was we didn't check. ARG.

EVENING: Julie & Josh painted the kite line at 10 meter interval, so we could gauge the height of the camera. When the paint dried, I went out the roll up the string and found it was in four pieces. Some animal had chew through the line in several places. ARG.

Well, we are learning a lot. We have a long way to go before we are a well-oiled KAP machine.

Of course there was a fine finish to the day. I was working on the computer and got distracted for a few minutes. Then I heard thunder in the distance and the power went off for a few seconds. I lost the first version of this lament. I then pulled the plug on all computers and went to bed.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

it's been a whole week since we last had internet access at the Andes, and I have a lot of material to post. I have many many pictures to upload and many stories to tell, but I can't do it all now. Anyway my posts from now on will probably not be in the order that the events actually happened. Here are some pictures i took today

this fly was on this head for a long time. I'm not exactly sure what it was doing. The anthers with the yellow pollen and the styles in the lowers rows are evident in these pictures

Flowering is winding down. This is one of the more photogenic of the heads that are done flowering

There are a few late plants that are just starting to flower. The may be the only one that is so late that looks normal. You can see one row of male florets on this flower. That means that this was the first day it flowered(mostly likely anyway).

here is head that hasn't started flowering yet, but it's not really normal. This has a condition that we call indented. In indented heads the middle of the head goes in (the head is concave), whereas normal heads are convex.

We saw a Robberfly today in the CG and I got some good pictures of it

here it is laying eggs into the spent florets on an Echinacea head.

here is a young head with an old one. In this picture the the open spent florets on the old head are large and easy to see.

Team Video

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Our initial protocol for painting bees called for painting bees as they were collecting pollen on the flower heads using a small paintbrush. Before starting painting, we had created "paint bandoliers" that consisted of microfuge tubes filled with different colors of paint and then taped in a line with duct tape to keep them together. We ordered the colors according to the rainbow to make it easier to keep track of the colors. Each color was given a three letter abbreviation. Painting the bees with paint brushes was fairly easy, but the shape and thickness of the dot had the possibility of being very variable. After researching bee painting, in particular queen honeybee marking, it appeared that the ideal dot that would last the longest amount of time is circular and uniformly thin. To obtain this ideal dot, it was suggested that a piece of wire whose diameter was the size of the desired dot be used.

We made new painting implements based on this information. We cut the wire on flags into about 15 cm sections, sanded one end flat, and then made handles for them from sticks and tape. We bent the sanded end about 45 degrees roughly 2.5 cm from the end so that we would be able to more easily paint the bees. At this point we were only marking Agapostemon virescens. It proved to be harder to paint them with the new tools as they were collecting pollen from the flowers. We had problems both getting a good dot on their thorax and also avoiding painting any other part of the bees, which would then decrease their survivability. We eventually planned on painting Melissodes. If we started painting them as well as A. virescens, we anticipated more problems with painting them on the flower heads because it appeared that they spent less time on the flower heads and moved faster and more jerkily while on the heads than A. virescens.
After a few poor painting jobs, we decided to chill the bees. The new protocol which proved effective was to catch 2-3 bees as we walked the random rows and then place them in labeled vials. These vials were placed in small lunchbox coolers that had ice packs in them. At first we used both glass and plastic vials, but we found that the glass vials worked better because the glass got cold while the plastic did not. We initially had 1 ice pack in each cooler and this worked fine for a little while, but once the ice pack was no longer very cold, we had problems with bees simply flying away before they could be painted or moving around too much for an easy paint job. To remedy this problem we started using two ice packs per cooler, which helped.
I found that the best way to continue to keep the bees cold was to paint the bees while they were still sitting on the ice pack. I left the ice pack in the cooler and placed a plastic bag on top of it. I did this so that the bee would not get wet from the condensation on the ice. This method worked rather well and the bees were usually very sedated and easy to paint. Working with the bees in the cooler also shielded them from the sun, keeping them cooler. One difficulty was making sure that the bees did not simply roll over on their backs in their stupor and smear the paint spot. Painting the bee on ice worked very well, but it also caused the ice packs to not last quite as long. It would be a good idea to have several other ice packs on hand in a larger cooler for when the first ones lost their coldness.
After painting a bee, we gently removed it from the cooler while it was on the plastic bag and allowed it to warm up in the sun, at which point it flew away. We released all of the bees within a few meters of where they were captured.

Pictures of equipment and painting will be posted once Andes has internet

Posted by Ian Grettenberger at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Amy Alstad at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a rundown of our equipment and various settings that we're using.

Kites:
Sutton Flowform 16
G-kites Dopero
Peter Lynn Pilot 50

Other kite bits:
Horizontal Brooxes AutoKAP Kit
A plastic winding halo
200 and 250 lb test string

Cameras and accessories:
Canon S70
Canon EOS 400D / Digital Rebel XTi
Canon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, aka the Nifty Fifty
GentLED infrared LEDs for setting off the camera by remote
Tower Hobbies RC FM transmitter and receiver

Software:
the GIMP (Free image manipulation)
UFRAW (includes a GIMP plugin for reading RAW images)

General camera settings:
Manual focus, set to infinity
Tv mode (shutter priority) set to 1/800 or 1/1000
RAW mode (RAW+640x480 on the S70, RAW on the XTi)
ISO 100 (200 or 400 if it's not sunny, though noise can sneak in at ISO higher than 400)
Bracketed down 1/3 stop
Zoomed out as much as possible (50mm on the XTi [doesn't zoom anyway, as it's a prime lens), ~28mm on the S70)
Remote-driven mode

Other bits:
Wooden ground markers (details soon, including images)
Paint

Posted by Josh Drizin at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was Friday the 13th, the kind of day the superstitious worry about and the kind that I figure is just another day. The wind was pretty good, enough to pick up our Flowform 16 kite with our camera rig. We went out to North by Northwest of Landfill and set out our ground markers [images when our internet gets back up]. With a pretty good wind from the west, we got the kite up and the camera rig above the roadside population. We took two runs along the road, once south and once north (higher and lower). Overall, it was a good run.

Until...

Until we plugged the camera into the computer. No images. Hrm.

We were using a new setup that day. Stuart had bought a radio-control set that we hooked up to the camera. It seemed to work just fine at the farmhouse... but not at the site. At this point, Julie and I were painting the kite string (so we could tell how much line was let out). Testing the RC stuff again, it SHOULD have worked fine. We're not sure why it didn't.

Cut to the next day. We left the string out to dry when we left in the evening and between our departure and Stuart's taking the line in a few hours later, some cheeky rodent decided that our artificial string would be a tasty snack and gnawed through it in a few places. Friday the 13th strikes again.

And now today. The 200-lb test line has been painted and is currently drying. I've worked out one of the problems with our camera rig (before, the camera would take a picture all the time: all that was needed was putting it on a different control stick. [images for clarity later]). I can now control both the Canon S70 and the new Canon Digital Rebel XTi (with The Nifty Fifty, a 50mm prime lens. It's a touch long, but our benefit in megapixels and in general quality should be worth it) with the press of a control stick.

Posted by Josh Drizin at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are some notes including completed management and what's left to do...

7/12/07 2:10 pm
The crew did a great job weeding Melilotus & Carduus yesterday and the day before. Very thorough job! They started cutting woody veg. Ash and Sumac are prevalent. Some others woody species include Salix, Rubus, Vitis, Ulmus. I looked where the single Toxicodendron plant used to be. No sign of it. I haven't seen it for several years.

I systematically walked the garden looking at these groups of rows: 56-51, 50-47, 46-43, 42-39, 38-35, 34-31, 30-27, 26-23, 22-19, 18-15, 14-11, <11, >56. I was searching for Lotus and gopher mounds.

7/12/07 3:13 pm
I removed Lotus corniculatus from these locations...
row pos
52-53 905-906 veg removed
54.5 973 veg removed
48 908.5 pla removed
29.5-30 872.5-873 plas & veg rem
17 954.5 pla rem
18 955 veg rem

I noted gopher mounds at these locations. Not all of these are active. I think there are many more ground squirrels than pocket gophers.
row pos
55.5 981.5
45.5 924
43.5 925
43.5 926.5
43.5 930
43 930
44.5 931
46 983
42.5 930
42.5 928
42 948
40.5 923
39.5 921
39.5 916
36.5 921
36 927
37 928
36.5 929
34.5 932
36.5 985
37.5 985
36 983.5
33.5 983
33 932
26.5 912
16.5 885
56.5 915

Note: a huge Thamnophis radix emerged from a hole at 28 940.

In the future—make a plant species list for the common garden. Here are some notes:
Helianthus sp & Galium boreale at 12 889
Stachys palustris in r16 p885
Lathyrus venosus & Galium boreale at r55-56 p970-973
Oenothera biennis at r9 p880
Spirea alba r 57 p973

What is that cf. caprifoliaceae on e side?

TO DO LIST ------------
Continue cutting woody veg.
Staple 98 garden.
Remove thistles on W edge.
Remove Phalaris patch r38-39 p~875.
Cut trees in ditch.
Girdle trees E of CG.
Make ladder stairs for S entrance.
Remove Cottonwoods from ditch.
Remove fenceposts.
Remove rebar posts & put in posts along edge.
Put signs along road (& E side?).
Intall webcam.
------------------------------

On 5 July 2007 Amy & Gretel found a harvested head in a bag from last year. They brought in the bag. Here's their note:
Mp0418
hdandbag
many achenes loose
many seedlings
25-972 flagged
16 seedlings at least

I noted the coordinates for seedling cluster:
r25.29 p971.63
and there's 1 seedling 13 cm NE'N of main cluster.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

the internet is down at Andes! and it has been for a week. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. Hopefully today

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Federal Highway Administration is seeking input about how to prioritize research on highway corridors and the environment (e.g vegetation, wildlife, wetlands, endangered species, brown fields, and water quality).

If you have any ideas, send them a comment.

They are interested in comments on big ideas, not proposals, before AUGUST 24, 2007.

I think we need to know more about how corridors of native plants along highways affects bees and other pollinators, including threatened insects. Also, does planting hardy native plants save money by reducing mowing and weeding costs? Do native plantings make driving a more pleasurable experience?

I'm also curious about the effect of planting native plants in highway corridors near native remnant prairies. On one hand, larger plant populations might improve the survival of plants and animal in the remnants by increasing the habitat area and expanding pollinator populations. On the other hand, planting non-local seed sources next to a prairie remnant might introduce genes into the local remnants that might reduce plant performance (growth, disease resistance, etc) and possibly hasten the demise of a plant population in the native remnant.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We haven't been blogging for quite a few days now because the internet has been down at Andes. Apparently the technician from Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Association couldn't figure out what's wrong, so he went home.

Here at research central, we've been luckier. No visits necessary from Runestone (but no time to blog either). When service is back up, we'll have lots to write about, including:

1. Our trip to Pembina to monitor Gretel's orchid management experiment. (We saw a prairie chicken and sandhill cranes, but no moose).

2. Failed attempts at kite aerial photography on Friday the 13th. (Plus details about what we learned in the process.)

3. Reports from the Bee team on their successful tracking endeavors.

4. A recap, or three, of BSA meeting.

5. Weeding & other adventures in the common garden.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I arrived in Chicago and am getting my presentation ready for the Botany meeting.

I heard that weeding went well today. Gretel said you all got a lot done. I know it's hard work. Did the 30-40 mph winds help? I miss being there.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 9:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... are boring.

I took about 118 photos this afternoon and the > 100 straight-down shots are not interesting. Straight-down shot will provide good data when we have the ground markers and get enough shots in the right places. But for visual appeal & interest, the photos are boring.

Flying the kite was fun. It was cloudy with 10 - 15 mph winds from the N - NNW. It was a challenge to get the FF16 kite up--a 15 minute ordeal. But when it got up, it stayed. It was tiring to take it down and then it easily went right back up again. I took shots of the CG and then went to Staffanson.

Here's one of the few shots with the camera tilted. I like it.

This is a view of part of the common garden from the West. The rows are 1 m apart and those things are tripods for the video cameras. The tripods weren't in use today and have plastics bags over them. Flags are more visible than the Echinacea plants. But If you click on the thumbnail, you'll be able to see some flowering plants in the larger image.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The toilet has again been modified. With the addition of the spider plant, the toilet is no longer a seat. It was uncomfortable anyway. The "maximum loading..." sticker came from the $10 hammock I bought from a garage sale. Not sure where to put it, but the trees near the pond seem to be the best bet. All I need is something to attach to the trees to attach to the hammock's chains.

Jameson has barricaded his garden in an effort to keep the enemy at bay. The enemy includes the likes of deer, bunnies, and probably ground squirrels.

Colin shot off some "fireworks" last night. A few of the pictures turned out well.

Posted by Josh Drizin at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As the crew posts profiles of themselves, certain aspects of people's personalities are inevitably left out. Our complex identities are unable to be fully described in a few short paragraphs. In an attempt to fill some of these holes, I present Julie Nicol.

Julie displays her talent.

Who would have known there are such wonderful animal impersonation talents in Team Echinacea. It appears that Jameson can do a killer cat impression too; we'll work on getting it on camera.

Posted by Colin Venner at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andy came back to the Mando today and he inspired us to create this
complete with swans
What is it you may ask? It's a revolutionary multi-functional piece of living room furniture. The full implications of this exciting new gadget are not yet realized. As a chair it has two or possibly three settings. It's great for playing guitar. It can be used as a planter. It also has ample storage space in the tank and in the bowl if desired.

Although Colin and I worked for hours making the wooden platform and fastening it to the bottom of new creation, I will give credit where credit is due. The truth is that if it weren't for Dr. Andrew Christoper McCall, our toilet wonder would not be in existence today. Thank you Andy and everything that you have done for us. It's quite special. I hope you think so as well. From all of us at the Mando, farewell Andy. We hope all is well at your new abode in Hoffman. If not we'll always have a spot on the floor with your name on it; literally (just kidding). If you want we can write your name on the toilet though

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In general, the two main differences between '99 South and the main common garden (for damage assessment and herbivory) appears to be less damage in '99 South and more ants (and less ant diversity).

When doing phenology in the '99 common garden about a week ago I noticed that the plants in the eastern-most row (those along the very edge) appeared to be more likely to have ants and (very anecdotally) seemed to have a different amount of florivery damage and browning than the rest of the garden (it's been too long owing to my laxness in flogging and I can't remember if it was less or more, though I am inclined to say less). Whether there actually is a difference in damage and whether this difference results from ants, edge effects, or chance remains to be seen.

A few days ago when I was doing phenology in the '99 South common garden I noted that the majority of plants in the garden had ants and that there was low variability in ant species composition - virtually all I saw where the large black ones with red heads. These ants were very aggressing and would leap off the flower head onto my stylus as I was pointing at the anthers to count them. I could practically hear them sharpening their mandibles. The northern-most row (those along the very edge) had few ants and the ants were of different species, including small black ones and light-colored ones. Interestingly, there was much more damage in this row.

Are these large ants actively defending their flower heads and increasing plant fitness?

Do other species of ants contribute less to the echinacea in terms of defense? Do they take more away in terms of pollen and nectar? It is not uncommon to see ants covered/dusted in pollen (I never observed this of the large black species) and I have twice seen a small black ant actively carrying pollen in its mandibles.

Posted by Julie Nicol at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Bee team has been busy (I'm avoiding including a bad pun here) lately. We have implemented and perfected our tracking protocol in the past couple of mornings, and have gotten some good data looking at the flights between flowering heads in the Common Garden. Yesterday morning we successfully tracked the flight of one bee to 57 consecutive heads! For the most part, we have been faithful to the original protocol, although we have found that working in groups larger than two is more successful.

We discovered yesterday that the bee we have been identifying as Halictus rubicundus is actually neither that genus nor species. Stuart brought up a reference collection from the U of M, and our best guess is now that our bee is Melissodes cf. subillata.

Posted by Amy Alstad at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rachel is a 3rd year master's student at the University of Minnesota in Ruth Shaw's lab. Her research is focused on the rapid evolution of invasive plant species in prairie fragments. She received her bachelors degree at the Central Washington University, and did post-bac work in the Australian rainforest with the School for Field Studies. She is a native of Washington state.

On the side Rachel enjoys breakdancing, hip-hop dancing, and gripping/gaffing on movie/television sets.

Posted by Julie Nicol at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Overall, today went pretty well. We managed to get the camera up on the small kite.

The wind gave us a few problems, though. The camera came down a few times and we had to run to grab it.

The big kite, however, had issues. After letting it out around 80 meters, the kite took a dive to the right... into a building. WHAM. This isn't a sound you want to hear. A few tears on the front, but not horrible. The problem came when Stuart was moving the kite. A gust of wind caught the kite around him. SNAP. Another bad sound. The carbon-fiber sticks were fine; an aluminum connector was not.

Posted by Josh Drizin at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We had a great picnic at Elk Lake Beach on the fourth. The wind off the lake was refreshing & would have been great for kite flying. Instead we ate great food, sat on the dock, swam, kicked the soccer ball, tossed a disk, and ate great food. The company was marvelous: Amy, Colin, Dwight, Gretel, Hattie, Ian, Jameson, Jean, Josh, Julie, Per, Pete, Rachel, Sarah, & Stuart. Folks stayed for about four hours and some got a little too much sun. The water was pleasantly warm, but a little greener than usual. I didn't take any photos.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 2:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We did herb & ray again today, which is short for herbivory and ray damage (i think), and afterwards to streamline the process even further for the future I took pictures of the different categories of herbivory/ray damage. The Main categories are Brown ray florets, Brown tips of ray florets, and straight, obvious herbivory of ray florets. I tried to categorize my photos into the different groups. There is some grey area between Brown and brown tips and there may be overlap of how those two conditions are caused. Brown tips are almost always associated with shriveling of the distal ends of the ray florets. We decided that brown area larger than 2X2mm area classifies as brown and less than that at the tip of the rays is brown tip. There are also sometimes small brown areas on the sides of the rays, which I think merits some attention. Another common anomaly is for the rays to have dark uniform spots on them. The last picture shows that condition

Herbivory:

Brown tips (bt):

Brown:

here is the spotted one:

Here are some other pictures I took today that may or may not contain herbivory/damage

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are some key resources:

Kensington general forecast and 48-hour surface wind forecast (from NWS in Minneapolis).

Hoffman general forecast and 48-hour surface wind forecast (from NWS in Grand Forks).

Current conditions at nearby weather stations.

Posted by Julie Nicol at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We forgot our list of what specific heads to video for each plant, so I decided, in the field, to just video the one with a twist tie color that comes first in the alphabet. I think we'll use this method from now on as it is at least haphazard and it's easy to remember.

Also, three of our rigged batteries failed immediately. I hope my big batteries from B and H come soon!

Video Andy

Posted by Andrew McCall at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A redesign of the original asymmetry contraption has finally reached (hopefully) it's perfected state. With a black felt backing I was able to take several test pictures in the '99 Garden South with the assistance of Dr. Andrew McCall.

One of these pictures was this beauty:

Later work with ImageJ allowed me to create a simplified version of the picture, with only the ray florets visible.

It looked something like this:

From this I was easily (with the help of a few lovely plug-ins), able to measure the areas of each ray floret. Thus, a measure of asymmetry is born!

On a note less related to Echinacea, I have realized that I haven't loaded very many of my own pictures from this adventure. I then remembered that I hadn't taken very many pictures, so in a frantic effort to catch up, I took a ton on a single day of work. So without further ado, I present to you the best of the pictures I have taken so far.

A Man and his Eggs.

Place of Work.

Man at Work.

Additional Folks at Work.

Jameson stole Per's Hat...

...So Per stole Jameson's Hat.

That's all for now, I'll get some more later. Maybe...

Posted by Colin Venner at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Studying and learning about insects that eat Echinacea and its seeds has been a sort of personal project of mine this summer. The other day I examined most of the inflorescences in the common garden that had been designated with disc florivory. I didn't immediately find anything too interesting but I took some notes and photographs that may lead to a breakthrough later on. Today I found something that I thought was interesting and could lead in an interesting direction. See if you can spot it.

if you still don't understand listen here

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Several pictures of the Bee Team marking bees.

Posted by Ian Grettenberger at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, due to a revolutionary development in our marking protocol, the Bee team members caught and marked 6 Halictus rubicundus in a relatively short amount of time. The secret to our success was capturing the bees and cooling them before any painting was attempted, instead of trying to mark them while they worked the Echinacea heads. Tomorrow we will spend a good portion of the morning marking bees in the common garden, and then hopefully be able to train the rest of the crew in, so that we can begin taking data in earnest later in the week. Read on for new and revised protocols...

Bee Painting Protocol
Needed Equipment:
-lunch box coolers, each with an ice pack and several glass vials
-paint applicator and bandolier
-insect net
-visor, with random number list and bee07 form

1. Walk rows as prescibed by the random number list with a partner, scanning 4rows across for bees on Echinacea heads
2. Catch any bees with the insect net (being careful of flower heads!) and transfer the bees to a chilled vial
3. Keep bees in cooler until sufficiently chilly and slow (approx 3-5 min)
4. Transfer bee from the vial to a flat working surface (plastic bag on top of the ice pack works well) and paint a small dot of the appropriate color on to the middle of the thorax
5. Allow the bee to warm up, and release it in the same vicinity in which it was caught
6. Record all necessary data (including bees species, paint color, plant coordinates etc) in the visor

Tracking Protocol
Needed Equipment:
-binoculars
-color key pallet
-visor, with random number list and bee07 form

We haven't yet tested this protocol, and there will probably be some revision/elaboration before it gets implemented. But this is the current plan:

1. Working in pairs, walk random rows, searching the 4 adjacent rows for bees.
2. When a bee is located, track it for as many consecutive flights as possible (we anticipate that one person should be visually tracking the bee, while the other partner records data in the visor, and assists with tracking when not data taking)

Posted by Amy Alstad at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are some preliminary instructions on how to observe and record bee/ant presence or absence while we are doing phenology measurements. I thought that while we are looking so closely at each head, we might as well try to garner some information on the Hymenopteran vistors as well. It will not be continuous data, but rather a simple 'yes' or 'no' measurement for each plant (bees) or for each head (ants).

Bee collecting composite pollen, copyright Jon Sullivan

For BEES:

As you begin your phenology measurements only scan for bees once you are within 1m of the plant. If there are any moving, active bees on any head, mark the appropriate box in your phenology form. As soon as you touch a head for phenology measurements, stop recording any bee presence/absence. So, if you are looking at a head and a bee lands on an adjacent head, just ignore it. For bees, we are interested in bee presence for the ENTIRE plant, so as soon as you see one, you are finished entering data.

Remember, wee are only interested in active bees, so don't count sleeping bees, dead bees, bees caught by crab spiders or assassin bugs, etc.

Ant, copyright Alex Wild

For ANTS:

Ant data are collected on a per-head basis. As you take each head into your hand and begin your anther count, notice if you see any ants on the top of the inflorescence (either ray OR disk florets). Don't make any special effort at looking underneath the inflorescence. If no ants make an appearance as you are handling the head, mark the head as having no ants, if ANY ants appear whilst you are searching the head, enter the data as such.

Andy

Posted by Andrew McCall at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello everyone, this is Andy McCall reporting from the farmhouse in Douglas Co. Minnesota.

I'm currently an assistant professor of biology at Denison University, a small liberal arts college (a SLAC!) in Granville, Ohio. I, like many people on the project, graduated from Carleton College , where I first learned to appreciate and love the prairie landscape under the tutelage of Mark Mckone .

Needless to say, I love teaching and learning and have wanted to be a professor since my time at Carleton. After Carleton, I studied alpine flies in New Zealand while earning my Master's degree at the University of Canterbury, leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, and wild radishes in California.

I received my doctorate in population biology from UC-Davis in 2006 with Rick Karban and spent some time in Ruth Shaw's lab at the University of Minnesota last summer, thinking about inbreeding, flowers, and insects -- a few of my favorite things! I met Ruth when she came to UC-Davis for a week as a workshop speaker in the Center for Population Biology and we immediately hit it off because we both have done work on the lovely annual plant, Nemophila menziesii . She introduced me to Stuart and the Echinacea project, and the rest is history!

Ruth, Stuart, and I were lucky enough to receive funding through the National Science Foundation to support our work on pollination and seed predation this summer, and I have received generous funds from Denison and the Battelle Foundation to support the students I brought from Denison this year: Josh Drizin, Jameson Pfeil, and Colin Venner. I'm psyched to be part of the project as I am certain that we are learning brand-new things about both Echinacea biology and prairie restoration.

Posted by Andrew McCall at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here’s a list of our objectives for the week. Our goal is to gain greater understanding of the ecology and evolution of plants and their associated insects in fragmented prairie habitat. This week will be a peak flowering week for Echinacea this year (1 – 2 weeks earlier that most years). We will spend most of our time observing things related to reproduction. Get down, Echinacea!

Flowering phenology—successfully mating depends on being at the right place at the right time. We can map _where_ all the action occurs later, because our plants don’t move much. Now, we have to figure out _when_ the action is happening and which plants are participating. Some plants are almost done flowering and others are just thinking about flowering.

Style persistence is a signal of which plants are not receiving compatible pollen. We can quantify SP at the same time we observe phenology. We will make phenology and SP observations in the common garden on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday and at Staffanson on Tuesday & Friday.

We will set up ~10 video cameras in the common garden each day. Each camera will be trained on a specific head to watch for pollinator visits. If we can figure out how, we will post a video online for your viewing pleasure.

The Bee Team will mark bees on Monday morning and probably Tuesday too. They will train all of us to make good observations and record high-quality data. We will do that all week. Here’s the link to _the_ online bee identification resource for Eastern North America. This is a great resource!

http://stri.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=apoidea#Identification

(It’s certainly good enough for our purposes in western Minnesota.)

The KAP team will take photos of our remnants, if the wind allows. They will be all ready to go when it does. We’ll be keeping track of local weather. Here are some key resources:

Kensington general forecast and 48-hour surface wind forecast (from NWS in Minneapolis).

Hoffman general forecast and 48-hour surface wind forecast (from NWS in Grand Forks).

Current conditions at nearby weather stations.

We will take head photos for symmetry measurements in the afternoons. Colin, now that you made one rig, could you easily & quickly make another one? If so, we could have two pairs of folks taking photos.

One afternoon we will take data on herbivory of ray florets in the common garden.

If weather on Thursday permits, we will take a field trip to visit the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid and help Gretel monitor her long-term experiment.

If it rains this week, we will weed sweet clover & thistle in the CG right after the rain stops—or during if there is no thunder. Bring gloves!

Finally, everyone will post a profile with a photo.

I am looking forward to the coming week! I’d better get some sleep so I can appreciate it.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have finished two weeks of the summer field season and I feel like we haven’t settled into a routine because we have been doing something new and different each day. It’s exciting.

Here’s a recap of accomplishments this past week…

Last week we finished searching for plants in the recruitment experiment. One plant (of ~1000 still alive) is flowering this year; it’s the first plant in the experiment to flower! The plant germinated in spring 2001.

Our high tech endeavors are underway and we have computer infrastructure to support them. Josh has networked the computers, hard drives, and printer. After some anxiety-inducing modifications to the video camera power supplies, we started taking video of pollinators & other visitors of Echinacea heads. Andy previewed a video this morning and it looks great! We still need to get more reliable power sources, but video cameras sure beat sitting on a bucket.

Colin has developed a camera rig to take shots of Echinacea heads in the common garden. We will be able to quantify many aspects of radial symmetry in the heads with the resulting digital images.

We assessed herbivory of ray florets in the common garden. We also looked at damage to disc florets. Jameson began to classify types of damage, but there weren’t that many heads with damage to the disk florets.

The KAP team (Julie, Rachel, and Josh) has made progress. Wind conditions have kept the kites on the ground most days, but they are making ground markers and have prepared the camera and rig. I flew the Sutton FlowForm 16 today in 12-16 mph surface winds at the park in Hoffman. Wow, it can pull. Yesterday, Gretel & I flew the G-Kites Dopero in somewhat variable winds. It was nervewracking.

The Bee team (Amy, Ian, Jameson, & Gretel) has abandoned my (bad) idea of watching bees through binoculars in favor of their much better idea. They are marking Agapostemon virescens individuals with acrylic paint and watching them when they are on the heads. They marked two bees on Friday and saw one on Saturday. Cool. They also have a slick form for entering observations.

We all have been making systematic observations of flowering phenology and style persistence of all plants in the common garden and along a transect at Staffanson Prairie Preserve.

In case anyone was wondering about the ostensibly narcissistic streak in recent posts, I _asked_ everyone on the team to post a profile with a photo.

Good work team Echinacea! We are making great progress in our quest to gain greater understanding of the ecology and evolution of plants and insects in fragmented prairie habitat.

Posted by Stuart Wagenius at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm Josh Drizin, a rising senior at Denison University. I'm majoring in Biology (minor in Chemistry). I'm interested in plants, and possibly more specifically in population ecology. I joined Team Echinacea because I wanted the experience in field work and the project sounded interesting. My tick count to date is 10. I rather enjoy photography and quite like listening to music (I need to get back into playing guitar, though).

Posted by Josh Drizin at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let me reintroduce myself. In rare forgetful moment, I left my self logged into the team computer at the farm house, and a prankster who shall not be named shared with the readers of this blog a couple of facts about my life. All of these facts, with the possible exception of the title of the entry are true. I'm a biology major at Carleton, and will be spending the fall semester studying rain forest ecology in Costa Rica. I like being outside in any and all capacities, love ornithology, and enjoy making and consuming delicious food.

Posted by Amy Alstad at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm Jameson Pfeil, the hairiest member of team Echinacea. I'm a rising senior at Denison University in Granville, OH. At School I live at an intentional community called the Homestead. I'm majoring in Biology at Denison and I'm trying to specialize within Biology, but I haven't settled on anything quite yet. I joined team Echinacea to get experience in the field and to learn a new discipline of biology. I'm originally from southeastern Pennsylvania, most recently Lancaster, PA, just west of the city.(and no I'm not Amish).

Posted by Jameson Pfeil at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)