Plant of the week... Eriogonum

As some of you may know, I am still not done with my thesis. I fell into the trap of getting a full time job before I finished. Many of my friends fell into this same trap, I guess I the high cost of living is the main cause. The problem with working a full time job is when you get home the last thing you want to do is work on a thesis. But I have found the time and I am almost done with the next round of edits. I have been struggling on proving what insect visitor pollinates my flowers.
On Monday, I made progress.

A little background... My thesis deals with pollination of dioecious Eriogonum. I compared 3 species of Eriogonum, E. diclinum, gynodioecious, E. umbellatum var. modocense, and hermaphriditc E. u. var. argus.

Here is a photo of a male E.diclinum inflorescence

and here is a photo of a E. u. modocense inflorescence...

On Monday I took my flowers and select insects to the Scanning Electron Microscope we have at the academy. I was able to take amazing photos of pollen grain by themselves and on the insets. The photos are amazing. Pollen grains for E. diclunum look like blunt footballs.

Pollen grains for E. u.modocense have a similar shape but are more pointed and have less of the dimples. The SEM is amazing. These single pollen grains are on the scale of microns but we were able to take photos of their texture. Quite a handy tool.
One of the main floral visitors was this guy. Lopidia sp. Here is one on a E. diclinum inflorescence. Even though the insets were very common, my observations showed these guys were not good pollinators. Their foraging behavior on the flowers did not seem to indicate they were great at moving pollen from flower to flower.
The SEM showed this may actually be true. This photo of the head of a Lopida is sparsely hairy and no Eriogonum pollen.
What the observational data showed was a small beetle, Amerocerus sp. is the main pollinator. This small beetle collects pollen on its head and thorax. When foraging, these are the areas that come into contact with the stigmas which would mean successful pollination.

This photo is one of the beetle covered in pollen. But what kind of pollen?

The SEM took a great photo of the insect body.
but a closer shot indicated all the pollen grains were the same.

We need to take more photos of other insects but the results look good. These photos show Amerocerus is main pollinator. All these pollen grains look like they are from E diclinum flowers which is also good. Amerocerus sp is the main pollinator for E. diclinum and these photos strengthens my argument. Success

tough day at the office...

The other day was tough. I had to go kayaking to look for frog egg masses. It was horrible. The sun was out, a small wind was blowing, I was in a kayak...

It was a fun time. I was glad to be out and about in the sunshine. I used to love winter and considered myself a winter person but now I am not sure. I used to live for precipitation, used to love staying inside reading a book or watching a movie. Lets not even mention the fun times snowboarding and snowball fights. But ever since living in vegas then redding then vegas I love summer and sun! Also living in the cold, cold Presidio the past 2.5 years could have something to do with it. With the rain events of the past few weeks the sun was a welcome change.

Since winter is still in effect, the only plant I could find with flowers was Scirpus californicus.

I did not find any egg masses or any animals for that matter. I did find tons of crap. There were literally tens and tens of tennis balls...
also a bazillion empty forty bottles... I hope they poured some out for their hommies...
I did find a driver for Frisbee golf. Apparently the disk is number 1
the survey took a few hours and I got a great upper body workout. Luckily the wind was minimal so rowing was not a challenge. All in all a great day at the office.

Christmas (and Colbert)

Merry Christmas all,
Christmas this year was white. I haven't been in snow for Christmas since living in Tahoe.
Betsy and I are spending the holidays in Pleasent View, UT with her family. This was a shot out the window on Christmas morning! Snow everywhere! Snow in Utah is so light and fluffy!
Christmas was fun. Presents, food, sledding, naps, more presents, more napping. I got tons of gifts and gave many too. It was fun to be with young kids on Christmas morning!

One of my favorite gifts I received this year was a copy of I am America (And so can you). So funny! I remember a time (before the strike) where I would watch the previous night's episode on DVR while getting ready for work. I miss Stephen's quirky views of current events. Almost as fun as Tatanka's point of view. Reading the book over the past few days reminds me that I miss the show. I hope the strike ends soon so I can enjoy new episodes.

Pick up a copy!

BEARS.....

The other day at the academy I was trying to finish my thesis. I needed a break and was walking down the hall and came face to face with a giant grizzly bear! Holy smokes. I thought I was done for. For some reason, the bear seemed distracted and was staring to his left.
I moved forward slowly and was sure to not make any sudden moves. Luckily this was before lunch and I didn't have any food smells on my body so I was able to get close enough to snap a quick photo and then made a run for it.
It was scary! I think it saw me running and gave chase. I made it to the hallway and was safe. The bear must have been chained up or something because he didn't make it down the hall.

I can understand why Stephen is so afraid of these things!

Tropical Plants of the week!

So I haven't updated my blog since Oct 14, 2007. Holy smokes. I have no excuse. I just haven't had the time or desire to update.
Also, winter.

It is hard to update a plant blog when the dead of winter is upon us. Not so many flowers. Luckily a few weeks ago for my honeymoon I went to the tropical lands of Hawaii. Here is a small sample of what I saw...


First up it the state flower of Hawaii, Hibiscus, a member of the Malvaceae family! This flower is everywhere. You may recognize this flower in its more common form....

another common flower we saw in Paradise was this orchid. People leave them on your pillows, deliver them to your room, etc....

another great thing about the tropics are chance meetings with your favorite fruits. They grow on the side of the road and in plantations, even in the lobby of your hotel. Here are some bananas

and here is a mini pineapple growing in the lobby.

the very rare chocolate covered strawberries grow wild here...



this is a member of the Piperaceae family. Members of this family are distinct because of the large bract and stalk of small flowers. There are hundreds of tiny flowers on that stalk.

Here is a member of Nyctaginaceae, or the Four o' Clock family, Bougainvillea.
members of this genus also have showy bracts but have tubular flowers in a set of three. They are usually white.

a member of Iridaceae...

many of the flowers you have seen here are used in the garden trade. I love the tropics!

gone fishing

Last week I got to do something completely different for work. I was able to help some biologists do a fish survey. How does one do a fish survey? By using an electrofisher of course. Elecrofishing is used by fish biologists to survey streams and lakes. They make ones for boats as well as a backpack model like the one we used.
Someone is lucky enough to wear the backpack unit and hold the pole with a metal loop on the end. Current is applied to the loop and fish that come into contact are stunned.
The range of the loop is about a few feet. The stunned fish float belly up and are quickly scooped up using a net.
So we find natural pools in a stream surveyed the years before. We string nets across the pools to trap the fish in the pools and do sweeps. All fish are placed into buckets to identify and measure. Measurements include length and weight.

It was a fun time trying to capture fish. I was on bucket duty since I had never done this before. As you can imagine, mixing electricity and water is a bad combination and can be dangerous so we had protective gloves and extensive safety training.

The current is not that strong and is dialed in to stun and not kill the fish. The electricity only stuns the fish and after a few minutes they become active again. I am not sure how they decide how many volts to use but it involves measurements of dissolved oxygen and turbidity and other nerd stuff.

We measured many fish and it was fun to work with them. We kept them in a special cage until we were done and let them go back in their pools. Electrofishing is an easy, fast way to catch fish. I know that some people use this method to fish for sport but is cheating if you ask me. I think someone died using a bug zapper to fish but that may have been in a Simpson's episode.


On the way home I saw a tarantula crossing the road. I guess the males are out and looking for mates. He was crossing the road and he was sooo big!

RADIO LAB!

My favorite new NPR show as of late is Radio Lab. I heard it on This American Life a few weeks ago and downloaded the podcast. I love it. They only make 5 shows a season but they are so good. The episodes are funny, smart and entertaining and have great sound effects!

The premise of the show is they take a topic and explore using science. Today I listened to 2 shows at work, Placebo and Sleep.

The Placebo episode explores the history of placebo research. One of the stories explores when a solder in war gets shot their pain levels are less than when a person in society gets shot. Listen to the episode to find out why.

The Sleep episode explores the evolution of sleep and sleep research on animals. Did you know that dolphins rests one half of their brains at a time. so cool

So download the podcasts and listen when you get a chance. I am sure you will not be disappointed!