Project:

Marine Worm Biodiversity on Long Island

Students:

Victoria Russo, Molly Milano, Julia Volberg

School:

St Dominic's High School, Nassau

Mentors:

Melissa Cipriano

Abstract:

This DNA barcoding project will be studying the biodiversity of marine worms across Long Island and how varying water salinities affect the marine worm biodiversity. Studying marine worms and the effect of water salinity on their growth and respiration is very important because the results can provide reasoning behind why in certain bodies of water on Long Island, on either shore, there is a greater biodiversity present. The collection of such marine worms will be taking place at the Waterfront Center in Oyster Bay, New York, which will serve as the samples from the North Shore, and for the South Shore worms, collection will be taking place at Jones Beach, Long Island. Research had been done that indicates that marine worms that live in environments with higher water salinity contents tend to respire less and have stunted growth. Adapting to high salinity environments is quite difficult for most organisms, especially marine worms. Thus, previous data supports that waters with high sali

Poster:

Team samples: