Farewell and Best Wishes
As this research project is now in the final stages of wrapping-up, we wish to thank everyone who participated in this inquiry; the students, mentors, teachers and others behind the scenes. We appreciate all of your efforts and contributions to this online learning community.

Scientific exploration is a process of discovery that can be fun! There are many unanswered questions about plants just waiting for new scientists to consider, investigate, and share.

Please come back and visit the PlantingScience Project Gallery anytime to view this project in the future. You can search the Gallery by key word, team name, topic, or school name.

Good bye for now.
Warm regards,
The PlantingScience team

Good presentation, Olivia.  In answer to one of your questions in the presentation: Generally, a plant cannot be over-pollinated.  The plant has multiple ways to stop bad pollen from fertilizing the ovules.  You can look up "pollen competition" to see some diagrams.  I did a research project on pollen competition in wild tomato plants when I was getting my bachelor's degree.  To view the pollen tubes, I stained them with a dye that glowed under florescent light.

Well done!  I like the revised graph you put in your presentation.  Good job labelling the axes.  I also like how you mention the potential additional pollinators but don't include them in the graph because you didn't actually observe them.  Good job separating fact from conjecture in your presentation.

As you are enjoying your holidays, maybe think of all the foods you are eating that require pollinators.  Pollinators need pollen and nectar throughout the growing season, but many food crops only produce pollen during a specific time (late spring for apples, summer for watermelons).  People can help bees by planting bee-friendly gardens with plants that bloom throughout the growing season.  This gives the bees something to eat when the food crops aren't flowering.  It also gives the bees a bigger habitat.  Check out this website hosted by the University of Illinois: https://beespotter.org/

I hope the rest of your semester goes smoothly.  Keep asking questions!

Looks like you are in the final stages of your projects.
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.

Thank you for helping us with our project! The presentations we uploaded are our final projects.

We'd also like to thank you for helping us with our project, and encouraging us to keep asking questions.  Thank you for being proactive, and providing us with support during our project.  

We wish you the best!

-Daphine, James, Olivia

I feel good about our results I think it would have helped if the weather was warmer, but our projects are now over. We are attaching our final project, (we all have different ones).

Yay, a graph!  (Sorry, I was sick last week.)

Your legend does a pretty good job explaining what the graph is showing, but you still need x-axis and y-axis labels.  Also, is it showing the total number of pollinators you saw over the whole experiment, or is it showing an average?

How do you feel about your results?

Thanks for the pictures!

It's great that you are seeing seed set.  Keep track of that because, if you don't actually see pollinators, you could analyze seed set as your dependent variable.  More seeds/fruit means more visits from pollinators. 

You're right that pollinators prefer sunny, calm conditions.  They may be coming out during brief times when the wind dies down.

We talked before about the definition of the independent variable, which for your experiment is the distance from the hive.  You also have the dependent variable - the thing you are measuring like pollinator visits or seed set.  In addition to these two variables, you have all the other things that can affect the dependent variable.  You've talked about sunlight, wind, and temperature.  Now, if these things are all the same between your two treatments, they should affect both plants equally.  So, if both plants are experiencing the same amount of sunlight, wind, and cold, none of these things could explain why one plant has more seeds than another.  Based on your observations, is one plant experiencing different conditions that could result in more or fewer pollinators?

Something scientists do before setting up a project is create a "hypothesis graph."  This is just like a hypothesis, just as a graph instead of words.  I have found it a really useful thing to do because it is then really easy to compare my hypothesis graph to my results graph to see whether the data supports my hypothesis.  You already have a hypothesis - that the flowers closer to the beehive will have more pollinators.  How would you show this in a graph?  You'll want your dependent variable on the Y-axis and your independent variable on the X-axis.  See if you can draw one in your notebook and take a picture of it.

This is a photo of the flowers that are around 3 feet from the beehive that is at my house.

This photo shows that although we have not been able to see pollinators within a set amount of time, pollinators are coming and pollinating the plants.

This photo shows that although we have not been able to see pollinators within a set amount of time, pollinators are coming and pollinating the plants.

Another thing to add is that although it was sunny, all of the plants (that our class is using) are located in the shade.  Will this contribute to the lack of bees?  The weather has been very cold, and when the wind blows, its fluctuates between a big gust of wind or a small gust of wind.  But the wind is powerful to an extent, as sometimes we will come back the day after to see plants that have been turned upside down by the wind.

We noticed that during our trials, it was very windy, and that the wind was blowing to the left of the flowers.

The temperature does affect pollinators a bit, but wind and rain affect them more.  What other notes did you take about the weather?  Was it sunny or cloudy?  How would you describe the wind?  What direction was the wind blowing?

we were observing our flowers at school(the flowers farther away from the pollinators) it was 44 degrees F and there were no pollinators.

we were observing our flowers at school(the flowers farther away from the pollinators) it was 44 degrees F and there were no pollinators.

Good job.  Now, how far should the two treatments be from the beehive?  It would be worthwhile to research how far bees generally travel.  If bees generally travel miles from the beehive, having one treatment 2 feet away from the beehive and the second treatment 4 feet away wouldn't really test the effect of distance because both would be pretty close to the beehive.  On the other hand, if bees only travel around 40 feet from the beehive, you don't want one of your treatments to be 50 feet away.  Make sure you are looking up information for the correct species of bees.  Different species of bees have very different foraging distances.  How far does your species generally go?

What you are calling the "controlled variable" is generally called the "independent variable".  Your teacher may be calling it the "controlled variable," but make sure you've got the terminology correct for class.  You wouldn't want to use the wrong term on the test.

In addition to the dependent and independent variables, there are all sorts of things that could affect whether a bee visits a flower.  What could those other factors be?

Here is some more info on the project

Trials: We are doing, for each flower, three 10 minute trials (one each day). In each 10 minute trial, we record how many bees visit the flower

Controlled variable: the flower's distance from the beehive

Dependent variable: the number of bees that visit the flower

for our project, we will place flowers closer and farther away from a beehive to see if the flower will do better or if the flower could be over pollinated.

Hi Team!

Please share files (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, images) in the "Files" tab to the left of this text area.

Thank you for your cooperation!

Yay for photos, but I can't open them!  Upload them to the "files" section of our project page.

Yes, taking photos through a microscope is tricky, but you'll get better with practice.  You have to line up the camera so it is looking straight down the tube of the microscope's oculars.

I just posted a photo of our pollen through the microscope! :)

Thank you!  We didn't think of that, but we'll definitely implement these new practices next time we perform a flower dissection.

On our flower, which our class called a "simple flower," we found the pollen at the stamen.  It was difficult, but we managed to sample some and look at the pollen under the microscope.

Any thoughts?  It was challenging to take photos through the microscope.

Thank you!

It helps to have at least 3 flowers.  Leave the first one intact so you can see where all the parts came from once you've cut the other two to bits.  Then, instead of slicing the flower completely in half, try slicing it open along one side and sort of unrolling the sepals, petals, and stamens.  Cut open the second flower and keep the third as a back up to cut open if you mess up the second one. 

A flower is made up of sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels.  The stamens are collectively called the androecium, and the carpels are collectively called the gynoecium.  Which part had the pollen?

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Hi mentor!

Sorry for the rather late response.

Trying to remove pollen from our flower was more difficult than we expected.  What is your advice for future pollen dissections?

We will attach a photo of our sketches/images as soon as possible!  Thank you for responding.

Can you post a picture of your sketches from the dissection?  Did you figure out where the pollen comes from?

Pollen is fun!  I studied pollination in wild tomato plants when I was an undergraduate at UC Davis.  I had a whole table in the greenhouse with tomatoes that had been collected from all over Chile and Peru.  I took pollen from each plant and used it to fertilize flowers on other plants to see which would be able to produce fruit.  If two plants are too different genetically, the DNA from the pollen won't work well with the DNA from the egg cell, the zygote will abort, and no fruit will form.  My results weren't as complete as I'd hoped, because a big greenhouse light fell from the ceiling and squashed half of my plants near the end of the project.

Hello!  I’m excited to be working with you on this project.  I’m a biologist with the US Army Corps of Engineers.  The Corps of Engineers is responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act, which means that we are responsible for making sure all our rivers, lakes, and bays are clean and healthy.  We also enforce the Rivers and Harbors Act, which means that we make sure no one builds a structure that will prevent fish from migrating or boats from moving along established shipping lanes.  The Corps of Engineers has both civilians and active duty military.  I’m a civilian, but I report to Lieutenant Colonel Rayfield, who is the head engineer for our district.

 

Here are some questions for you guys:

Have you ever grown a plant from seed?

Do you have a garden at home?

Here in California, we have redwood trees that are over 300 feet tall.  The wood in their trunks is largely made of carbon atoms.  Where do those carbon atoms come from?  The soil?  The air?  The water? 

Hi team!

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