Project:

Analyzing the Biodiversity of Ants With Different Phenotypes Along the Forge River, New York

Students:

Andrew Bilotti, Fatima Qureshi

School:

William Floyd High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Victoria D'Ambrosia

Abstract:

The overall trend of biodiversity in the forge river is decreasing. This is because of duck farms and industrialized agriculture in the past. Due to these historical anthropogenic events, this environment has become hypoxic. Hypoxia in the Forge River negatively affects biodiversity (Swanson, 2010). Given the historical state of the sediments within the Forge River it is important to have ants within the Forge River ecosystem because they increase soil quality (Harvard, 2011). Barcoding is more accurate than identifying species specifically on phenotype. An expected outcome is to find a relationship between pollutants in the sediments and the species of ants found.

Poster:

Team samples: