Project:

Unidentified Fauna and Species Biodiversity of the Peconic River

Students:

Marcie Hogan, Gavin Fontanez, Ava Saffren, Brendan Virgil

School:

Eastport South Manor HS, Suffolk

Mentors:

Robert Bolen

Abstract:

Our efforts in this project are focused around determining differences in biodiversity in the Peconic River from years past to this year and also to identify any new novel species or novel barcoding sequences. We obtained specimens from the lower Peconic River and will be doing most of our research around aquatic specimens. Currently, we have a species we know was not found by our class last year, a type of crayfish, and an amphipod we could not identify (potentially novel). Other species we obtained were several samples of leeches, crayfish, water boatmen, dragonfly larvae, and damselfly larvae. We will barcode all species and ultimately determine if the biodiversity has widened, dissipated, or remained somewhat consistent while also checking for new strands of DNA sequences not in the most current database.

Poster:

Team samples: