We are looking to study the environmental stressors that impact organisms in the Hudson River valley. Specifically, we are interested in studying long term effects of human pollutants on wetlands ecosystems. We are proposing a study that will look at how these pollutants affect a foundational species, the scud, in that ecosystem over multiple generations. Our research will help forward our lab’s goals of studying how climate change impacts epigenetic inheritance.
After selecting two model organisms that will allow us to study stress in the Hudson River ecosystem, we split up into two groups. Our group is studying the amphipoda, the scud. Specifically, we are in the process of choosing whether we want to work with Gammarus fasciatus or Gammarus tigrinus. We determined that these two species were ideal to study what we want as they have a rather short regenerative cycle and are located in the Hudson River Valley, thus we believe that we can easily track epigenetic inheritance using the scud. So far, we have been learning about how previous studies have used scuds to track oil stress, Cadmium Chloride stress, temperature changes, and the effects of pharmaceutical drugs. These studies are important because they allow humans to determine the amount of pollution they are putting out in the environment and how this pollution is affecting organisms and more broadly their ecosystems. In addition to this, we have also been learning about scud habits, such as where they feed, their habitat, their lifecycle, and their ecological significance. We look forward to continuing our groundbreaking research!!
In the next week , we would like to write a grant proposal to receive funding from organizations such as Marjot and the Hudson River Ecological society. Our future goals for the project include, but are not limited to, collecting wild populations of scuds to study epigenetic inheritance.
Austin and Yash
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