Project:

The Impact of Invasive Species on Biodiversity

Students:

Sadie Waldron, Rosaura Pantaleon, Raymilka Rodriguez, Shiva Karmakar

School:

Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Manhattan

Mentors:

Evelyn Wing

Abstract:

Identification of invasive species is important in any environment since they tend to harm existing biodiversity. Due to their nature, these species feed off the resources for the species present in the ecosystem. This would eventually lead to a domino effect and eventually cause the entire ecosystem to fail. Understanding the relationship between the amount of invasive species to the biodiversity of an environment can illustrate the negative effects of such invasive species. Our goal is to explore this relationship by first gathering samples by traveling to Carl Schurz and Central Park. Next, we would extract the samples through DNA barcoding using the silica method. Once sending the data to the lab and receiving the identifications, we will be able to analyze the number of invasive species and native species. By doing so, we will most likely be able to compare the amount of biodiversity present within each location and whether or not the number of invasive species had an effect on it

Poster:

Team samples: