Project:

Changes in the Biodiversity of the Peconic Estuary

Students:

Caitlin McGovern, Caylin Luciano, Ryan Lee

School:

Eastport South Manor HS, Suffolk

Mentors:

Robert Bolen

Abstract:

As humans, we ruin the ecosystems of many environments by pollution and destruction of land. In doing this, we affect biodiversity in a negative way. Due to negative human impact, many organizations including The Nature Conservancy (NC) aim to conserve the diversity of the estuary. The NC became involved in the Peconic Estuary Program to increase beneficial human impact. They will restore wetlands, bay scallops, weakfish, and piping plover populations. We are using organisms collected from October 2019 of organisms in the estuary to collect species biodiversity to assess the water quality, biodiversity, and overall wellness of the ecosystem. We plan to identify organisms using DNA sequencing of the mitochondrial CO1 gene. Comparing gene sequences will enable us to determine relationships, if the species are invasive, if they carry diseases, or if they are novel species/sequences. We will use the mitochondrial CO1 gene because we are able to identify what organism it is based on the gen

Poster:

Team samples: