Today was the first day we brought out the plants to a natural population in Cascade Valley! While Jack and Dr. Ison went to look through the trail for more populations, I stayed behind with the plants and other supplies in an area with just one Campanula and low and behold, a Bombus landed on one of our flowers.

We hiked a little further down the trail to a good sized natural population with a huge amount of Megachile. There, Jack practiced setting up his array and I practiced getting a single pollinator visit and collecting the styles after a visit. Jack learned that it would be easier to label all the plants with a single letter or number to be able to better keep track of where the pollinator is going and to be able to just call it out. I learned that I could probably use 200 microliters of water in the microtubes instead of 1000 so that the pollen can be more concentrated and also that videotaping won’t be necessary for my study. We also made sure to catch a Megachile to add to our reference library.

After we came back from Akron, we made adjustments to our field plan and got a supply list ready for the next time we went out as well as made data sheets. Sunday will be our first data collection day out in the field!

 

-Ashley