Fun Stuff

enter the growth chamber

2012-10-23T01:18:43Z

Based on the flog, it may seem that the lab activity has been consumed with counting seeds and identifying ants. However, I should point out that there are some real live plants in the lab as well.

Maria has been lovingly tending her Dicanthelium plants that she germinated last fall. One of the perks of working at the Chicago Botanic Garden is the high-tech growth chamber that allows you to control light, temperature, and humidity on a programmed schedule. Maria has programmed the chamber to approximate fall in Minnesota.

Any one at CBG can use the growth chamber for their research. Anna Braum, a grad student at Northwestern, is growing host plants for her experiment on the parasitic plant Castilleja coccinea--also known as the indian paintbrush. Here she is watering her plants (with help from Maria).

Mon 3 Sep

2012-09-04T04:28:26Z

Shelby, one of the PhD students working with Ruth, departed for St. Paul today. So only Katherine and I are left in the big town hall. I guess we poured ourselves into fieldwork as we got a lot done today. In the morning we finished demo rechecks at KJs, then flagged seedling refind plants at East of Town Hall. We returned to Hjelm House for lunch, then set out for Nessman, finished seedling refinds there (total 6 plants). We also finished seedling refinds at East of Town Hall (5 plants). From there we headed to Aanenson for demo rechecks, and got almost halfway done! We also had fun taking photos of prairie, ourselves and cows at Aanenson.

Belated Friday post (31 August)

2012-09-02T01:47:48Z

Hey folks, it's Maria. Sorry for late reporting - the post I had written earlier was lost due to internet fuss, and I didn't have the heart to rewrite everything again. So, unfortunately, you'll have to settle for a concise report.

And yes this time I'm writing in a text editor first before copying and pasting onto the flog.

Friday was Kelly and Jill's last day.

In the morning we finished demo rechecks with 2 teams at Staffanson, while Kelly finished harvesting her heads.

After lunch Stuart went to K-town to pay rent and utilities, while the rest of us did our projects/ cleanup. When Stuart returned we went to Staffanson for seedling refinds. Stuart used the GPS to find and flag focal plants, and did a few sling refinds. Katherine and Kelly resolved a particularly complex circle - the plant by the road. Jill and I worked on a few simpler circles.

We celebrated the end of the day with rootbeer floats. Dinner was pizza and supper was black bean brownies, sending off Kelly and Jill with a flourish.

Photo courtesy of Katherine.

p/s 31 August is Malaysia's National Day! Selamat Hari Kebangsaan to all fellow Malaysians :)

Sync-ing in the Rain (Aug 30)

2012-08-30T19:46:54Z

Maria here.

Woke up this morning to some rumbling thunder in the distance.

The skies looked grey, but nothing too bad. We discussed how to do all the things we had to do at Staffanson: demo rechecks, harvesting Kelly's Echinacea heads, removing twist-ties and flags from heads/plants that Kelly won't harvest, figuring out 6 nearest neighboring Echinacea plants to each of Kelly's plants that was going to be harvested, and pulling up ant traps. Whew!

We did some individual project stuff from 9 to 11am. Jill finished up sorting ants. Katherine and Kelly went to NWLF and NNWLF to pull ant traps and remove twist-ties from heads. I was in CG 99 South, measuring Dichanthelium from my maternal lines experiment, and got 4 rows done before 11am.

We set off for Staffanson, all 5 of us cozy in the truck. The corn and perennial weeds greeted us happily on the dirt road leading into Staffanson. Jill went to pull up her ant traps and then helped Kelly to remove twist-ties and flags. Stuart, Katherine and I brought out Sulu (the GPS), R2D2 (the netbook), and paper datasheets, and tried to figure out how to determine the 6 nearest neighbors to Kelly's harvest heads. We concluded that the most efficient way was to use R to determine the 6 mapped nearest neighbors, obtain the distance to the 6th neighbor, then use a reel tape to measure out the distance and search to see if there are any other nearest neighbors closer than the mapped one. We would have to do it another day.

Here's a fancy spider Stuart found on his knee today. Photo courtesy of Katherine.

On the way back for lunch, Stuart and Kelly belabored the pros and cons of color coding the top and bottom GPS poles.

After lunch we set out for Staffanson again. Kelly worked solo to harvest heads, while the four of us split into 2 teams (1 GPS + 1 clipboard) to do demo rechecks. After a little while, it started sprinkling and we heard some distant portentous thunder, so we turned back and left Staffanson.

Back at Hjelm House, Jill and Katherine cleaned up the ant traps and went to pull ant traps at Nessman. Stuart demonstrated dissecting achenes from Echinacea heads for Kelly, so she can dissect the heads she harvested when she's at Carleton.

Lastly, as requested by Stuart, the "Sync Your Visor" song I came up with as an alternative to "Sync, Sync, Visor Sync":

(To the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine")

Sync your visor, sync your visor,
Sync your visor everytime;
Data lost and gone forever
Don't be sorry - sync it now!

Any suggestions for improvement are much welcome.

Monday and Tuesday, Aug 20th and 21st

2012-08-22T02:44:21Z

The past couple of days have been lovely for outdoor work--sunny, cool, a little breezy. On Monday we said bon voyage to the Wagenius family as they prepared for their trip back to Chicagoland. Stuart will be back next week, but Gretel and the kids are done for the summer. Now there are five of us and no shortage of work to do.

Monday morning we went to the site off of hwy 27 to take demography data on plants that flowered last year and reconcile errors from this year's demography census. With two teams working with the GRS-1 GPS units, the task went quickly and smoothly.

We spent Monday afternoon re-finding seedlings at KJ's. This is a particularly challenging site because there is a high density of plants in a small area. We continued the endeavor this morning, and I'm happy to say are nearly finished. We should be able to defeat the beast tomorrow morning.

Here are Jill and Maria looking for seedlings at KJ's. Red flags mark completed focal plants.

This afternoon we performed some routine maintenance of the main experimental plot, pulling out flags that marked plant we could not find. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon on individual projects.

Karen Taira, who came up last week, has been spending her days working on her pollination experiment involving several species of Helianthus. Her field story of the day was that she found a pile of entrails next to one of her experimental plants. Apparently they were bigger than a prairie dog's and smaller than a human's. Perhaps it's a new form of sacrificial sun worship--Praise Helianthus!

Tuesday, August 14th

2012-08-15T18:31:09Z

Tuesday was a cool, windy day with scattered rain showers. In the morning we descended on KJ's, a small site chocked full of Echinacea, to check on seedlings in Amy's recruitment study. We made some progress, but we have a long way to go at that site.

In the afternoon, we all crammed into the pickup truck and rode over to Krusmark's, an isolated site near the Wagenius property. Maria was especially excited to ride in the truck bed. We collected demography data on flowering plants and gathered seed from sideoats gramma grass (Bouteloua curtipendula) to scatter in the main experimental plot.

Since there were not many flowering plants, we finished up in time to catch up on chores around the field station. Here's the Wagenius kids helping Shona clean up after her pollination crossing experiment. She and several others developed a wire contraption to keep the pollinator exclusion bags away from the anthers.

It is bittersweet to see a good summer coming to a close. Lydia left on Sunday, Andrew's leaving on Wednesday, and Shona will head out on Friday. Although we are sad to see them go, we have plenty of work to distract us from our sorrow.

Sunday & Monday July 29-30

2012-07-30T20:34:14Z

Howdy folks,
Maria reporting from K-town.

Sunday we had a real day off =)

The weather was good and sunny, but not too hot.

Random tidbits from the town hall:
Shona made oatmeal pancakes for breakfast - they were really yummy - thanks Shona!
Kelly and Shona went swimming at Elk Lake and bumped into the Wagenius family
Katherine found a new trail in the forest at the Runestone Park on her biking adventure
Andrew had a great time at home and arrived at the town hall before 11pm
Lydia spent the day helping out in the kitchen at the camp in Alexandria
I made Irish Soda Bread to use up some sour milk, but still have ~1 cup sour milk (turned into buttermilk substitute, any ideas what to do with it? Pancakes would be easiest, but we just had them)

After the weekend break, it's time for work again! Monday (today) we divided and conquered.
AM - Greg set out his yellow pan traps in his remnants. Stuart, Katherine, Jill, Lydia and I did demo in the remnants. Ruth and Greg came to join us. We found many Echinacea flowering at Loeffler's Corner East, an okay number at Loeffler's Corner West, 2 at Railroad Crossing (Douglas County), and ~6 at Yellow Orchid Hill.
The others (Shona, Kelly, Andrew) did CG1 rechecks and then worked on their independent projects.

Ruth bought some delicious fluffy spongy chocolate cake which we cleaned off the dish.

PM - The two teams switched jobs. Stuart led Shona, Kelly, Andrew, Ruth and Greg in demo at KJs and On 27. The rest of us did CG1 rechecks, and then worked on independent projects.

Here's a file called "Crash Course in R", which might be helpful to folks
crashR.2.pdf

Now for some photos!

Flowering Dichanthelium!

I think this is a super cool picture as it shows 3 stages of Dichanthelium stigmas/anthers emergence. See how the bottom-most spikelet has the stigma just emerging, while the anthers are still inside; the middle spikelet is open and has both stigma and anthers well-exserted; and the top spikelet is closed and the anthers are drooping out from the spikelet.

Last but not least here's an epic picture from our bonfire last year :D

Saturday July 28th

2012-07-30T04:15:05Z

Saturday brought a resurgence of the "not-so-bad" weather we've been enjoying this week. Several rainstorms have brought some much needed moisture to the soil. The reason I mention this is that while I worked on my aphid addition/exclusion experiment, I noticed a lot of dirt mounds on plants where aphids were present. Presumably, ants build these structures to cultivate aphids. Some of these were small, consisting of only a few small pieces, and some were large, taking up a large portion of a leaf. Here's one of the smaller examples. The opposite side of the leaf was covered in aphids.

Here's a picture of one of the plants in my aphid addition group. As you can see, the ants are taking full advantage of the situation:

As for other field work, Kelly spent the morning checking the status of flowers for her phenology study. Most of the remnants have stopped flowering, with the exception of one plant at a small remnant and many at the Staffanson prairie preserve. Because the west half of Staffanson was burned in May, Echinacea began blooming later than in the unburned half.

In the evening, we all gathered at the Wagenius family home for potluck dinner and bonfire. I should say bonfires, since there were two right next to each other. Pyromanic desires were fulfilled by all.

Saturday: Storm and Sunshine

2012-07-22T20:38:40Z

Hi guys,

Saturday morning i woke up at 6am (body clock working on weekday schedule) and couldn't go back to sleep, so i decided to watch the approaching storm, from the safety of the front door of the town hall. Saw some really interesting things that will sound like they were right from a children's book but it was all true.

The sky was a strange yellow glow. i'm guessing it's because of the sunrise before a storm. In the north and northwest direction, there were dark clouds and low rumbling thunder in the background. But in the opposite direction, birds were chirping incessantly. The sun was literally gleaming above the dilapidated barn house. I saw a rabbit prancing across the neighbor's front yard. I watched as storm clouds in the west covered and uncovered a double rainbow. Gradually the storm clouds moved from north to south. Some pattering of rain, and cool lightning chases in the north/northwest, accompanied by louder thunder.

Around 6.50 i went back to bed. Jennifer was already up - she was going to meet Stuart at the Hjelm House at 8, and then go to Caribou Coffee in Alexandria to work on her manuscript for the whole day.

Later in the morning, Katherine went to the common garden to do her aphids experiment, which took all day.

Taking advantage of the cool temperature (high 70s with 10mph wind), Jill went out for a run at 10 and I went out for a slow jog at 11. Lydia, Andrew and Kelsey (Andrew's special friend) went to Alexandria around noon - Andrew was showing Kelsey around. Kelly, Shona, and Jill went to the Starbuck beach in the afternoon and had lots of fun. Apparently there was lake itch at the first beach they went to but they found another beach on the same lake that didn't have the itch.

In the evening, Kelly and Shona went out for a run before going to Alexandria to watch The Dark Knight Rises. Andrew and Kelsey joined them at the movies.

Oh, and the obligatory picture. My camera got really wet in the rain (i foolishly put it in my raincoat pocket), so it's retired from service for now. But I still have tons of good pictures from this summer and the last, so no worries.

This was from the day of the storm. The yellow glow I was talking about. That's my bike parked outside my field site at Hegg Lake.

And this is a really cool bug I found on Dichanthelium. It can climb vertically and upside down very well, and it seems to have suction pads on its feet. Photo courtesy of Lydia.

Maria

Monday July 18th

2012-07-18T14:09:24Z

Monday was quite sultry, if I remember correctly. In the morning we divided forces to look at flowering phenology in C1 and to finish measuring the plants in Amy Dykstra's experiment at Hegg Lake. She has two experimental plots there: one containing the offspring of inter-remnant crosses and the other containing seeds collected from source populations between Minnesota and South Dakota. She sowed seeds in 2008 and has been tracking their progress every year since. Once we finished finding and measuring plants, Stuart took GPS points for each experimental plot:

While he was doing that, Shona trekked off into the prairie to check on the plants in her hybridization experiment.

Meanwhile, Lydia and I waited by the truck and took advantage of the opportunity for an epic pose. I'd say it was successfully epic.

A Frenzy of a Friday

2012-07-15T02:24:37Z

Friday the 13th of July! Sorry for the late posting.

Weather report:
According to my field notes, at 6.35am at Hegg Lake it was warm, no breeze, and a little dewy. The rest of the day, it was hot and humid, though not as bad as the past few days.

Fieldwork report (morning):
I was at Hegg Lake from 6.35am-10.30am, checking on my Dichanthelium plants for seeds that are ready to be harvested. The unfortunate news: 1 of my experimental culms dried out, and another culm was broken off :( On the brighter side, the potted Dichanthelium from my pilot bulk experiment are doing quite well, and a second one started producing spikelets!

Kelly and Shona were out at Staffanson GPSing all the flowering Echinacea plants, including Kelly's phenology plants.

Andrew and Lydia were in C1 observing and catching pollinators for Andrew's project. Lydia caught one pollinator. There wasn't much activity in the garden.

Jill was identifiying ants under the dissecting scope in the basement all morning. She found that many of them were Lasius and Formica.

Katherine was working with the data from the aphid survey and conducting preliminary analyses. She is planning on performing aster analysis with her data.

Ruth, Amy and Brad came over today. After lunch, we headed out to Hegg Lake to Amy's plots where we measured seedlings that were sowed in 2008. We were out there until almost 6pm, impressive work!

Stuart and Ruth :)

Poor broken culm of Dichanthelium. See how some spikelets were still open?

Tired Team Echinacea...

Wednesday, July 11th

2012-07-12T03:35:36Z

After last week's sultry weather, we've been enjoying a "dry heat", as Greg Diersen so artfully put it. This morning everyone went their separate ways to pursue their individual projects:

Shona, Maria, and Lydia went directly to Hegg Lake and combined forces to measure plants and take GPS points. Shona also photographed Echinacea pallida and E. angustifolia plants as part of her project to assess species traits.

Andrew searched the main experimental plot (C1) for plants where he can observe pollinators. Because peak flowering has passed, his selection of flowering heads is growing slimmer by the day. Fortunately, he has some good observations under his belt and will be able to collect more before plants stop flowering.

Jill and Greg joined forces in operation pit-fall trap. Greg's traps are bowls full of soapy water that he sets on the ground and leaves out for a couple of days. Jill's are tubes full of propylene glycol that she submerges in the soil and leaves out for a week. Today, they set out Greg's traps and collected from Jill's. I have to say: the smell of dead insects stewing in propylene glycol for a week is probably one of the worst smells I have experienced.

I spent the morning removing aphids from plants in my aphid addition/exclusion experiment. Even though it has been three days since my last exclusion, there were aphids on 11 out of 50 plants in my exclusion group. One plant had 67 aphids--all in three days! Those aphids are moving and breeding fast.

This afternoon we joined together in our common goal of measuring every plant in C1. My mother used to say that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Well, today we bit a big chunk off of our elephant, finishing up the sections planted in 1997, 1998, and 1999. We have less than half an elephant to go!

And now for a picture. In addition to helping us keep track of plants, pin flags make great habitat for spiders:

Wednesday, July 4th

2012-07-06T02:55:00Z

We were all having so much fun on the 4th of July that I forgot to write the events of the day.

Technically, the 4th of July is a day off for the Echinacea crew. Plants don't celebrate national holidays, so we spent the morning assessing flowering phenology in the main experimental plot. After that, Andrew experienced a series of unfortunate events that kept him from observing pollinators. On the upside, he learned some valuable lessons and made a new friend.

Because aphids don't take holidays either, I spent the latter part of the morning visiting plants in my aphid addition/exclusion experiment to remove aphids from the exclusion group. The goal of my experiment is to capture the effects of aphids in natural conditions--i.e. no cages or bags. That means that in order keep aphids off of the plants in the exclusion group, I need to visit them every few days to remove them by hand. For fifty plants (plus fifty more in the addition group) that's a lot of footwork.

We celebrated America's national holiday with a picnic at Elk Lake. We crammed in as many all-American activities as we could: potlucking, canoeing, sand-castle building, frying in the sun. If things weren't American enough, Stuart brought a print-out of the Declaration of Independence, which we all took turns reading around the picnic blanket. Go America!

I didn't get a good group picture, but here's a cute shot of Jill, Shona, and Kelly:

Sunday

2012-07-02T03:50:15Z

(Aghh I just finished writing and then when i tried to publish the site told me that my session had expired and of course I lost the whole blog post T___T )

Anyways...
Today was a very hot and humid day. Temperatures into the 90s, feeling like 100. Sweaty sweaty sweaty.

Some of us accomplished field work.
Andrew was in C1 this morning painting bracts and bagging Ech flowers.
Katherine was also in C1 doing her aphid add/exclude experiment.
Shona was out at Hegg Lake for 4 hours painting bracts and observing crossed styles.
I (Maria) was also at Hegg Lake (for my own reference from around 10.30 - 4.40pm) surveying Dichanthelium inflorescences I've been tracking for the past week or so, and more importantly, finding plants for my pollen limitation experiment. I have 31 plants flagged and 62 inflorescences twist-tied. I'll be initiating the experiment tomorrow, so I should be in bed now (hence, I'll give more details in a later post).

To end off the week, here's a special 6-leaved Virginia Creeper (they are usually 5-leaved) I found in the 99 south garden. Hope it brings everyone good luck!

Tuesday June 26

2012-06-27T03:02:47Z

Here are the day's events:

When we arrived at work this morning we came upon a poignant scene. The Wagenius' family dog, Roxie, had was nurturing an abandoned kitten:

I'm happy to say the poor creature has found a home with Kelly and her parents. Thanks to her loving care (and Roxie's), it is now purring and mewling with gusto.

Once the kitty situation was resolved, we moved on to more serious business. Shona, Maria, Kelly, and Lydia spent the morning working on their individual projects while the rest of us assessed flowering phenology in two experimental plots (C1 and C2).

A lot of work goes into maintaining an experimental plot. In order to keep C1 from being overgrown by woody plants, several of us spent the afternoon trimming ash trees and sumac. The rest of us made progress on our individual projects. Thanks to help from Kelly and Lydia, Jill and I succeeded in setting up ant traps for all but one of our field sites. I'll post more about that later.