Project:

What is the diversity of nocturnal epigeal arthropods?

Students:

Charlotte Gee, Elizabeth Lam

School:

West Islip High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Mary Kroll

Abstract:

Nocturnal insects are important in the pollination process. The DNA of these organisms is essential to identifying them, seeing as how there are so many variations and different types of pollinators. Nocturnal insects are decreasing in population due the increase of human development which increases the amount of light pollution which affects earthworms, insects, mites, slugs, and snails (Bhardwaj et al., 2019). We plan to collect nocturnal pollinators that are epigeal, or crawl on the ground in order to better identify this group of organisms in our local area. To do this we will collect different types of nocturnal pollinators attracted to two different types of black lights and white light to see which of these lights attract nocturnal pollinators the most. We hypothesized that the organisms captured using a black light will have a greater diversity compared to the organisms captured with the white light because insects are generally more attracted to the black light.

Poster:

Team samples: