Barcoding Biologists Go Bug Hunting!

Year 10 biologists collect insects as part of the ‘barcoding for beginners’ project at Bishop’s

On Thursday 23rd April, we went around the school looking for unusual insects. We used different sampling equipment including pooters and sweep nets to collect our insects ready for the next stage of our project. It was a great sunny day but the insects were hard to spot, most of them were hiding in and around the school pond!

So what is our project? We (15 Year 10 biologists) have started a 10 week project in collaboration with the Wellcome Genome Campus (https://www.wellcomegenomecampus.org/) to isolate the DNA from various insects and sequence it so we can identify the insect based on molecular comparisons and, maybe, we have found an insect that is yet to be classified! This is the first stage of the project and we are all looking forward to the next few weeks of discovery.