Sarah Adamowicz - Edit 1

- In our lab group, we're really interested in biodiversity. So we're interested in the evolutionary of history you know, how did species evolve, how did different types of biodiversity evolve. We're interested in biodiversity in the present, so where are species found, how do they interact, why are they there, and we're also interested in the future of biodiversity. What kinds of organisms might be at risk with environmental change, how might geographic distributions change over time with environmental change. So we're really interested in those different dimensions of biodiversity. We bring molecular tools to the study of biodiversity. So by using DNA based methods, we can study biodiversity in much more detail than what's possible before, including very small organisms that are often overlooked such as insects which are really important for global biodiversity in total as well as many ecosystems services that we rely on. So instead of actually having to catch an organism, which can be time-consuming and can stress out the organism we can take a sample of water, filter the water and study trace amounts of DNA that are present in the water to get a DNA based signature of what biodiversity is in that water body. Certainly, there are many utilitarian arguments for understanding and protecting biodiversity. The natural world provides us with so many things including pollination services for the agricultural systems we rely upon. Clean air and water, for example, are other major ecosystem services provided by biodiversity. We can use DNA based methods to get more detail about the biodiversity and also to get answers faster and at a finer scale. So that's one of the ways in which I'm interested in translating what we're doing here at the university setting into broader application in society to help to support environmental health more broadly in society.