Project:

CCMJ Proposal

Students:

Madeleine Malinka, Catherine Ciprian, Jack Greenfeld, Caiden Lung

School:

Lynbrook Senior High School, Nassau

Mentors:

Kathleen McAuley

Abstract:

There are several concerns associated with synthetic turf including loss of wildlife habitat, contaminated runoff, and migration of synthetic materials. Many communities are renovating old grass fields and implementing new turf fields on public properties such as sports fields. Synthetic turf fields being added cuts off the supply of nutrients into the ground, removes nesting sites, and hinders access to water. Ants are an abundant species whose biodiversity could be affected relative to their location of synthetic turf fields. This study seeks to find out if there is more diversity in species of ants in a place where turf fields were just added compared to a place with all-natural grass. Ants were collected from two different locations at Grant Park in Hewlett, some near the turf fields and the other far from the turf fields. DNA barcoding will be used to further identify ant species after collection. Our expected results are there will be more diversity in the locations far from the

Poster:

Team samples: