Reproductive isolation, asynchrony, and incompatibility in fragmented prairie populations of Echinacea angustifolia

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The ability of organisms to successfully reproduce in small, isolated populations is a key factor in the generation and maintenance of biological diversity. Reproductive failure due to isolation is a current prospect for many of the long-lived, perennial plants that make up most of the grasslands of the central U.S. because these grasslands now exist mainly as small remnants of a once great prairie. Previous research has suggested that three of the most important causes of reproductive failure in prairie plants are mismatches in the timing of flowering, limited ability to disperse pollen, and mechanisms of compatibility that restrict mating between closely related individuals. This project will be the first to test how all three of these factors operate together in a natural system. Researchers will measure timing and compatibility of plants of Echinacea angustifolia (coneflowers) in 27 populations in Minnesota over three years and merge these data with an 18-year, continuing study on the population growth of the species. The intended result is a unified understanding of how habitat fragmentation affects the reproductive potential of grassland plants. The broader impacts of this project include conservation of biodiversity, student training, and new tools for the scientific community. Results will be communicated to land managers and the general public through the outreach programs and collaborations of the Chicago Botanical Garden. Baccalaureate and graduate students will learn new skills in population biology and computing. The project will publish its detailed spatial and temporal data sets of reproduction in Echinacea and develop freely available software to enable other researchers to manage, visualize, and analyze this information in Echinacea and other species.