Compound Light Microscope Pictures

This is Cory looking at pollen under the microscope.

This is a photo taken by me of Calla Lily pollen at 400x.

This is a photo taken by me of Asian Lily pollen at 400x.

This is a photo taken by me of Daylily pollen at 400x.

Addendum 1/10/14

Today, Cory and Sophie edited the procedure. We plan to take pictures at 400x soon, because we missed that station.

Analysis of Phylogenetic Trees

(Program used: Jalview)

(Program used: UniProt)

After making two trees (one being based on pollen while the other is based on plant sequences) we, as a group, were a little surprised with the differences in results. The "guide tree" we made on UniProt and the official tree we made on Jalview showed that the Calla lily and Asian lily is more similar than the Daylily. It caught our attention because we all thought the Daylilies and Asian lilies would have much more in common with each other. Not only does their pollen look almost identical, but they also share most of the same physical attributes.

As a group, we came to the conclusion that we trust the results of our pollen tree more than the alignment because we can actually look at the similarities and differences using a SEM with our own eyes rather than trusting the tree based protein alignments. If the alignments were correct than that would throw us for a loop and we all would want to further investigate this to figure out and understand exactly what makes Calla lilies more similar to Asian lilies than Asian lilies being similar to the Daylilies.

Experimental Data Analysis

The Data shows that Daylilies have monoculpate pollen with a regulate/rugulate texture, Calla Lilies have inaperturate pollen with a psilate/scabrate texture, and Asiatic Lilies have monoculpate pollen with a regulate texture. Daylily pollen is around 49.5μm wide and 122.0μm long. Calla Lily pollen is approximately 33.2μm wide and 29.1μm long. Asiatic Lily pollen is close to 35.6μm wide and 117.0μm long. Both the Daylily and Asiatic Lily pollen were monocolpate, whereas the Calla Lily pollen was inaperturate.

Our Data cannot fully support either hypothesis, and instead seems to half-support both of them. The Daylily and Asiatic Lily pollen supported the hypothesis that they were closely related with their regulate texture and monocolpate apertures. The pollens are also similar in size. On the other hand, the Calla Lily has psilate/scabrate texture, inaperturate surface, and a much smaller size, supporting the hypothesis that the different lilies will have different pollens.

Pictures of the Flowers

Asian Lily Source

 Calla Lily Source

Daylily Source

Evolutionary Tree Based on Pollen Morphology

Tree