TOMS RIVER – Authentic Science Research (ASR) students from the Toms River Regional School District will be working with Israeli high school students to study a bacteria called Wolbachia.
The students will be collaborating and sharing data during the 2018-19 school year.
According to the University of Rochester, Wolbachia is a reproductive parasite that manipulates the reproductive biology of its hosts to increase its own transmission. The study the Toms River and Israeli students were conducting focused on the mosquito population in each area.
The New Jersey Education Association funded the workshop that was conducted over the summer with a $10,000 grant.
“The Wolbachia research project helped students begin to establish the statistics of the parasitic bacteria in our mosquito insect population,” Toms River High School South Principal James Ricotta Jr. said.
Christine Girtain, the director of the ASR, said she believed it was important for students to engage in collaboration and find solutions to real world problems.
“A total of 16 students did the initial training and they will act as student leaders to help me teach other students the biotech skills and procedures. Students from all three high schools participated and my fifth grade son. Five students were ASR students,” Girtain said.
She said the workshop was productive.
“Four of my ASR students are pursuing Wolbachia research. Christiana Ntim is looking at how Wolbachia may or may not influence the prevalence of West Nile virus in mosquitos. Somyia Elbready and Ashley Ababio are investigating the frequency in macroinvertebrates in streams and how that may relate to stream health. Marissa Frusteri is looking at how GABA (a neurotransmitter) effects fruit flies with Wolbachia compared to flies without Wolbachia,” Girtain said.
Girtain said she wanted the students to be inspired by the research.
“The mosquito commission was very impressed with the caliber of students at the Wolbachia workshop and how well they could separate the different species of mosquitos after they learned how to use a dichotomous key, especially my 10-year-old son Josh. He was very good at identifying the mosquitos. You should have seen his face when they dumped all the bug samples on the table, it was priceless,” Girtain said.
According to Mike Kenny, spokesman for the Toms River Regional School District, the Ocean County Mosquito Commission supplied mosquito samples collected from multiple sites in Ocean County.
“Being able to find, pursue and attain grants to fund innovative projects like the Wolbachia study is so important to our district. It allows us to implement projects we might otherwise not be able to, it highlights the passion and creativity of our students and teachers, and very often it connects us with peers and colleagues locally, nationally, and even, such as in this case, internationally. Most importantly, grants like this help us advance student achievement, which is at the core of everything we do,” Kenny said.