PROJECTS

SEQUENCING NEW YORK HARBOR: EFFECTS OF SALINITY GRADIENTS ON BIODIVERSITY (HUDSON RARITAN ESTUARY, 2019)

This project is a study to observe the possible correlation between salinity and marine macroinvertebrate biodiversity and to collect a baseline of marine macroinvertebrates in the New York Estuary. Finding the biodiversity of New York Harbor through bioinformatics will increase the knowledge of the New York Estuary’s overall health. If the harbor’s health is known, steps can be taken to improve it and, as a result of that, citizen health will improve. The problems being addressed with this biodiversity study are: is there a correlation between salinity and biodiversity, and what is the biodiversity of the New York Estuary? Data will be collected from selected points along the coast of New York Harbor and compared with data from other locations. It is expected that there will be greater biodiversity in an area where salinity fluctuates often. With this project, researchers hope to further both scientists’ and the public’s understanding of the ecosystem on which New Yorkers are heavily dependent.

SECRETS OF THE BUTTERMILK CHANNEL (2017)

The purpose of this research was to discover how diverse the New York Harbor is, specifically the Buttermilk Channel. We did this by using genetic barcoding to get the most precise answers. One of our other goals was to compare two different primers, the Leroy and Folmer primers.