Project:

Bioblitz of Plants at Heritage Park

Students:

Nicholas Tom, John Casino, Viren Penagaluru, Dylan Kaplan

School:

Mount Sinai High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Allison Elfreth

Abstract:

Plants cover around 31% of all land on earth. Through photosynthesis plants provide other organisms with oxygen that is needed for cellular respiration. Plants are also the world’s largest food source. With plants being so important for the survival of so many other species we were interested in looking into the biodiversity of plants in a local ecosystem. For our project we will go through a local park and try to get a sample of all the different species of plants we come across. We expect to find a wide variety of species in the park because more different species will increase the biodiversity of the ecosystem which will make it more stable. We will isolate DNA from the samples through gel electrophoresis and compare the results to other samples that already exist in the database to help us determine the species of our samples. We will use DNA barcoding to gain insight into the biodiversity of plants that exist in our area.

Team samples:

See all samples for project