Barcode Long Island Team The Mystifying Mosquitoes
Program:
Barcode Long Island
Year:
2019-20
Research Topic:
Biodiversity & trade
Taxonomic Group Studied:
Animals: Invertebrate

Project:

Biodiversity of Mosquitoes around Glen Cove
Students:
Nicholas Novosselov, Christopher Hyman, Brian Flores, William Romeo
School:
Glen Cove High School, Nassau
Mentors:
Kerry Bunyan

Abstract:

We will be studying Mosquitoes on Long Island and the potential virus’ they can carry. We will do this by collecting mosquitoes in the Glen Cove area and identifying the species. We hypothesize that we will collect Asian Tiger Mosquitoes, Culex pipiens, and Toxorhynchites in the Glen Cove area. We hypothesize this because there have been reports of virus’ and diseases on Long Island carried by these specific species. We will get the mosquitoes by building a trap and luring them in there with sugar and yeast (to produce carbon dioxide) and have them die in the trap. We are going to extract DNA from our samples and amplify the coI gene using PCR to determine our samples species. We are hoping to learn how mosquitoes affect human life. We want to see if mosquitos every mosquito has the ability to infect a human with a virus. Also we want to see how deadly these viruses are and how they affect human health.

Poster:

Team samples: