Project:

Night "Bioblitz": Insects and Invertebrates

Students:

Sarah Bender, Miles Muchirahondo, Elijah Gale

School:

Longwood High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Noelle Oehler

Abstract:

We are partnering with the Open Lab at Brookhaven National Laboratory to continue our research about the biodiversity of our insect population on campus. Our project is based on similar projects in which groups have tried to initially characterize biodiversity in a certain area using DNA barcoding, sometimes called a “bioblitz” (1). We will be using the Longwood High School area to develop research projects for students in the Advanced Science Research class, which will be based on species detected in the pine barren area. We will combine classification of insects and invertebrates by visual inspection with DNA classification of samples that are not easily identified by inspection. In 2022 the Advance Science Research students conducted a bioblitz on the school property during the day; however, this year we want to collect insects at night to compare the insect abundance between the day and night time. In addition, the goal of this DNA barcoding proposal is to characterize the inse

Poster:

Team samples: