Project:

Carlls River Macroinvertebrate Collection

Students:

Brian Merrigan, Rohan Chintarlapalli, Dale Cautheri

School:

Babylon Junior-Senior High School, Suffolk

Mentors:

Claire Donaldson

Abstract:

The goal of the project is to barcode macroinvertebrates in Carlls River, and to determine the health of the environment. If the population of a certain macroinvertebrate species decreases or increases, this information can help determine what factors led to the population change. The creatures that were collected were a variety of macroinvertebrates that ranged from aquatic worms, to miniscule, spherical bugs. The collection method used to retrieve the macroinvertebrates was by loading a litter net with leaves, rocks and left over food. Then, the litter net is thrown into a specific location. After one day, the net is retrieved and dumped into a bin. The leaves get checked then thrown out, and then the water gets searched for macroinvertebrates. The macroinvertebrates are to be put in a micro centrifuge tube, and labeled. The collected Macroinvertebrates will be frozen and exposed to lysis for the purpose of extracting the DNA. After the DNA is extracted, TAQ polymerase, Nucleotides a

Poster:

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