Project:

How herbicides effect Long Island's spider biodiversity and environmental contribution through DNA barcoding

Students:

Marche DuMaurier, Noah Sussman, Molly Tuohy

School:

Cold Spring Harbor HS, Suffolk

Mentors:

Jamie Lawlor

Abstract:

Spiders are part of the Arachnid family, which includes mites and ticks.They help us tremendously by eliminating unwanted pests and possible dangerous insects. Herbicides are a substance which is toxic to plants and unwanted vegetation. Herbicides are often used on lawns, agriculture, and turf management.. Our goal is to collect spiders from two different locations, one with herbicides sprayed and one without. In our case we are collecting our specimens from Old Westbury Equestrian Center, which has not been sprayed with any pesticides, and our other collection location is at the Old Westbury Golf Course, about a mile down from the other location, which is sprayed heavily with herbicides. We want to test the biodiversity in those areas of spiders to see if the herbicides affect them directly, and what environmental impacts it might have. We will be using a putter to collect our twenty samples.

Poster:

Team samples: