Project:

The Use of DNA Barcoding for validation of spec ies of local ants collected a the West Babylon Senior High School Courtyard Long

Students:

Paige Tiedemann, Hailey Frampton, Olyvia Carrasquillo, Sofia Greiner

School:

West Babylon Senior High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Andrea Durbin

Abstract:

The goal of this project is to identify what species of ants live in our school courtyard at West Babylon Senior high school. We will try to identify the ants using a key and our eyes, but we get more information when we extract the DNA and compare it with known ants to see if we can find a match. Some species that may be found in our courtyard are the acrobat ant, carpenter ant and the little black ant because these are some common ants found on Long Island. We collected the ants by setting up a cookie trap to lure them in and waited a day for them all to be easily accessible to capture. Our motivation for this project is to see what ants species live in our courtyard and possibly find a new species. The methods that we will use to accomplish this goal are extracting the DNA from the ant and purifying it. Then we will conduct PCR on a specific gene to help us identify the ant species. Next we will run gel electrophoresis to then send the DNA we collected to Cold Spring Harbor Laborato

Poster:

Team samples:

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