Project:

Biodiversity of the Peconic River

Students:

Christopher Bruno, Thomas Fabian, Sarah Idler, Amanda Balsamo

School:

Eastport South Manor HS, Suffolk

Mentors:

Robert Bolen

Abstract:

For the past 5 years, Students had been collecting samples to barcode and still continue to study the samples for this project. Usually we would gather them ourselves but due to COVID-19, we have to use unstudied samples from last year. We will send them out to the lab to get sequenced and compare the DNA sequences using DNA Subway and the NCBI BLAST program to compare to already collected species of the Peconic river area. Comparing sequences to previous years’ collections will enable us to determine if any of the species collected last year are novel or have novel sequences, or are possibly invasive. We need to measure the biodiversity of the area because using that information, it can help us use indicator species to help determine the water quality, oxygen and nitrogen levels and how healthy the ecosystem overall is. We will be barcoding and looking at the CO1 gene which is found in the mitochondria of organisms is used to help identify certain individuals and diversity within th

Poster:

Team samples: