I'm sitting in the Premier Lounge at Capetown International as I write this.1 My flight doesn't leave for another 2 1/4 hours, and I've been here for nearly 3 hours already. It's not that I'm that paranoid about getting to airports early for international flights.2 It's that Jane and the rest of the Protea team had to get to De Hoop tonight. They had hoped to drop me off a couple of hours earlier, but their errands in town took a bit longer than planned.
This has been a very successful trip. Thanks to Jane's careful planning, data from the Protea Atlas Project, and advice from Tony Rebelo, we collected every species of Protea we were hoping to, except for P. simplex and P. lorea. We sampled between 50 and 60 species of Protea throughout South Africa, with 2-5 populations of some of the widespread ones - not counting the 19 populations of Protea repens we have in the garden at Kirstenbosch.
In addition, data we just took in Kleinmond3 involved trait measurements and DNA sampling of 88 individuals (white and pink morphs of Protea longifolia, pink Protea compacta, and white Protea repens) and detailed physiological measurements (photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll fluorescence, mid-day water potential) on a subset of 47. The physiological measurements are a repeat of those Jane and the crew made a month ago before I arrived. And they'll make the same set of duplicate measurements in De Hoop, having made the first set in early June. All in all, a very successful trip.
And that's just the Protea part of the work.
Cindi's and Carl's teams are collecting and measuring Pelargonium, and John's team is collecting community data, first in the vicinity of the Kogelberg, now in the Cederberg.
This has been a very successful trip. Thanks to Jane's careful planning, data from the Protea Atlas Project, and advice from Tony Rebelo, we collected every species of Protea we were hoping to, except for P. simplex and P. lorea. We sampled between 50 and 60 species of Protea throughout South Africa, with 2-5 populations of some of the widespread ones - not counting the 19 populations of Protea repens we have in the garden at Kirstenbosch.
In addition, data we just took in Kleinmond3 involved trait measurements and DNA sampling of 88 individuals (white and pink morphs of Protea longifolia, pink Protea compacta, and white Protea repens) and detailed physiological measurements (photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll fluorescence, mid-day water potential) on a subset of 47. The physiological measurements are a repeat of those Jane and the crew made a month ago before I arrived. And they'll make the same set of duplicate measurements in De Hoop, having made the first set in early June. All in all, a very successful trip.
And that's just the Protea part of the work.
Cindi's and Carl's teams are collecting and measuring Pelargonium, and John's team is collecting community data, first in the vicinity of the Kogelberg, now in the Cederberg.
1The National Science Foundation is not paying for my presence here. It's a benefit associated with my American Express card.
2Though Jane will testify that I am a bit paranoid if you ask her.
3Remember what I said about how to interpret "the data we collected."
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