Project:

Bioblitz of Fungi in Heritage Park

Students:

John Casino, Nicholas Tom, Viren Penagaluru, Dylan Kaplan

School:

Mount Sinai High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Allison Elfreth

Abstract:

Heritage park stands as a prominent public place in our community. With our bio blitz of fungi at Heritage Park, we intend to learn more about the fungal species located here. The purpose of the fungi in the park is to decompose dead organisms into useful nutrients for other plants to feed off. Fungi also play an important role in public health, as some fungi may have medicinal benefits. We plan to use sterilized forceps and gloves to extract the fungi from its environment and place it into a labeled bag. To determine if it is a fungus we will look for characteristics such as filamentous hyphae, a fuzzy or powdery appearance, and dome-like mushroom appearance We will go around the park and collect every physically different piece of fungi we see in order to ensure our collection is morphologically varied. In collecting fungi that appear different we hope to collect no duplicates for the sake of maximizing our results. There will be 20 different fungi collected and documented upon compl

Poster:

Team samples: