Project:

The Impact of Restoration Efforts on Fish Biodiversity

Students:

Lauren Kennedy, Michele Muscolo, Victoria Cipriani

School:

Connetquot HighSchool, Suffolk

Mentors:

John Halloran

Abstract:

Abstract: The three rivers we will be sampling from -- Carmans, Peconic, and Connetquot -- have all had dams installed on certain spots on the river for anthropomorphic reasons. During the last ten years, the Carmans River and the Peconic River have had fish ladders installed by the dams in order to make it easier for the fish to get access to parts of the river above the dam. We have two goals in our experiment; to find a correlation and difference of biodiversity between rivers with and without restoration, and movements of fish within the rivers. In total, we are looking to collect six samples in triplicate, taking samples from above and below the dams. To achieve this, we will be collecting water samples from each of the rivers in Nalgene bottles and then filter the eDNA out of the water through a handheld pump. Then, after the filtering, we will process our results to DNA Subway for them to go through the Purple Line, which will determine the alpha and beta diversity measures.

Poster:

Team samples: