SamaraLab2020

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Brooklyn College, CUNY *

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106

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Biology

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Feb 20, 2024

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pdf

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8

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Morphology and seed dispersal data collection lab Page 1 Factors shaping seed dispersal; milkweed seeds and maple samaras BEFORE LAB Read the Introduction and skim the lab exercises below Watch except from David Attenborough Private Life of Plants OBJECTIVES 1. Clarify issues of random sampling and sources of error. 2. Understand the importance of dispersal for plants, including tradeoffs between light versus heavy seeds for species that are dispersed by wind. 3. Understand the main principles of biological scaling and allometry. 4. Practice skills in data management (Excel) and graphing (Excel). INTRODUCTION Samples and Populations Morphological variation (differences in shape among individuals) links ecological performance with evolution and adaptation . It is usually impossible to measure all the members of a taxon. Can you imagine measuring body length for all blackbirds in North America (millions)? Or wing length on all silver maple seeds in North America (billions)? Biologists almost always have to measure a sample of specimens taken from the larger, complete population to which the sampled specimens belong. Statistics is really the mathematics of describing and testing hypotheses about populations, from samples. This means that selection of the sample to be measured has a powerful impact on the resulting data. Which forest and which trees do we choose for collecting the maple fruits? What geographic region for the blackbirds? What time of year? What age or developmental classes? These and a hundred similar questions influence sampling decisions long before the first data point is measured and recorded. Random sampling has two components; that all individuals in the population of interest are equally likely to be sampled, and that individuals within a sample are independent of each other. Most samples violate the ideals of random sampling in many ways. One last term to define is test statistic . A test statistic is a measure of how different your data are from the null-hypothesis prediction. If you are looking at the means of two samples that differ in some categorical way (species, color, location collected), the null hypothesis is that the means are equal. If you are looking at the relationship (slope) between two continuous variables, the null hypothesis is that there is no relationship, so the slope is zero. Examples of test statistics you might come across are t , for comparing
Morphology and seed dispersal data collection lab Page 2 two means or a single slope, F to compare one or more means or slopes, or more complex models, and c 2 used to test frequencies of combinations of different categories (cured or not after taking medicine vs. placebo, genotypes in observed vs Hardy- Weinberg predicted frequencies). FOCUS ON TODAY’S WORK: MORPHOMETRICS, FLIGHT, AND DISPERSAL OF WINGED FRUITS Terrestrial plants are sessile, so they rely on seed dispersal via animals or wind or water flow to colonize new habitats and escape local extinction. For wind-dispersed plants there are likely several trade-offs between light weight and aerodynamic shape to disperse farther and heavier weight to store more food for the plant embryo. The winged fruits of trees like maple, ash, and tulip poplar are called samaras . Everyone has seen these fruits dispersing through the air because they spin like little helicopters and are fun to watch. In the lingo of aerodynamics, they are called autorotators because they spin on their own without any internal rotating force being applied (like the engine on a helicopter). Most dispersing fruits and seeds do not spin. Why do the samaras do it? The answer is that they do it for the same reason real helicopters do it: to generate lift and stay aloft against the force of gravity. How do they do it? The wings of samaras have special shapes which create an upward force on the wing when air moves past it. The more lift that is created, the easier it is to stay aloft, the slower a samara falls (the slower the descent rate ), and the farther it may travel on the wind before landing on the ground. All other things being equal, potential dispersal distance is positively correlated with the amount of lift generated by the wing and negatively correlated with weight. Numerous morphological factors influence descent rate . Your task in this lab is to develop hypotheses about the relationship between morphology and flight performance in maple samaras and measure and graph the relationship between those variables. We will return to these data to test our hypotheses statistically in a later lab. As a warmup we will conduct an experiment on seed dispersal in dandelions as a function of height or release. Then, you will measure length and one other variable in each of two species of samara- producing maples, and we will examine Part 1: Height of release and dispersal distance in milkweed seeds. Milkweed is a common plant that often grows in hayfields and other agricultural areas. It has a defensive sap that few herbivores can tolerate, but several specialists (Monarch butterflies Danaus plexipus , milkweed beetles, Tetraopes tetrophthalmus , and milkweed bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus ). It is also a subject of recent interest because the use of highly effective herbicides, enabled by insertion of herbicide tolerance genes into corn, soy, cotton, and canola among other crops, has reduced the amount of milkweed in the
Morphology and seed dispersal data collection lab Page 3 Midwest, probably contributing to sharp monarch butterfly declines (Flockhart et al . 2015). I am interested in how seeds from milkweeds growing in active (mowed) hayfields vs uncut fields disperse. Milkweed seeds have feathery silk strands attached to help them disperse. Milkweed can flower at greatly different heights depending on whether they grow in a field that has been mowed, or were allowed to grow un-disturbed, as you can see from the pictures below. Actually, the picture on the right probably has some mowed/regrown milkweed towards the right rear. Recent attention has focused on how regrown, mowed milkweed is more attractive to monarchs laying eggs, and less attractive to predators of caterpillars (Alcock et al . 2016, Haan and Landis 2019). What might be a functional effect of this difference? It could have a large effect on spread and dispersal of seeds. Seeds that travel farther could avoid competition with parents and siblings, could find habitats much better (or worse) than where their parents grew. To test the effect of higher seedhead placement on dispersal, we will release at least 5 milkweed seeds from each of 5 heights in front of a fan and record the distance travelled for each one. Asclepias syriaca seed pods, upper image from August and lower from December, Photos Greg Hume; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias#/media/File:Asclepias_syriaca_seed_pod.jpg Left: Regrown milkweed from mowed field, from Alcock et al. 2016. Right: Mature common milkweed, photo by Phil Westra, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org
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