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closeExperiment Start Date
Posted by jnmaloof on 15 Jan 2007 at 22:26 GMT
The ability to simulate many aspects of different local environments as described here is very exciting. Deciding how to set experiment start dates is challenging. In this case the experiment started with May 1st conditions for both environments. However it seems likely that plants living in the two true environments would germinate at different times of the year and be at different developmental stages on May 1st. I'm not sure what the best way to handle this is, and I would be interested to hear other thoughts on the matter.
RE: Experiment Start Date
borevitz replied to jnmaloof on 16 Feb 2007 at 17:38 GMT
Hey Julin, great question. Indeed experiment start date is crucial and many alternatives should be explored. Thanks for brining it up. Our next run is Spain March 1st (with Carlos' advice) and Sweden May 1st (according to Alison Anastasio in Joy's lab who's been out there recently). We also have a better model now of the light mixture, see SolarCalc2.0 by Kurt Spokas. The issue of seasonality to me seems to be a mixture of both qualitative winter annual vs spring annual (even biannual) and quantitative early mid and late fall or spring. Adaptation can be in both categories. Chris Schwartz and I found both early and late fall, (eg Kentucky December cohort K Donohue Ecology 2002), germinating this year in Pardeeville WI!
http://naturalvariation.o...
a nice example when a transplant gets in wrong.
http://naturalvariation.o...
Thus we hope to start some experiments and follow on with a couple different plantings, ultimately using local populations with reciprocal transplants in the lab, with the hope of sorting out the genetics behind it. Thanks again for the comment! I welcome further discussion from the community on the topic.. Justin Borevitz 2/15/07
