Carter Lear: freshwater biodiversity

Carter Lear, who works with the University of Guelph and is based in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, describes his work to collect aquatic organisms and prepare them for DNA analysis as part of the Arctic Bioscan (ARCBIO) project.

• Transcript

  My name is Carter Lear, I'm 19 years old.

  Currently I'm working with the University of Guelph, taking part in a project called ARCBIO, where we are building a DNA reference library for all of the insects in the Arctic, and what I'm doing right now is sampling for aquatic invertebrates.

  After this outdoor sampling, I'll head out into the lab back at CHARS and I'll sort everything and put it into ethanol to help preserve the DNA and then it will all be sent down to Guelph in Ontario for DNA analysis.

  Here we are at the teaching lab, now we will process the sample we just collected. What I'll do in terms of processing is I'll sort out each of the species or at least the different families and I'll try to get at least five minimum from each family if there is that many. That way we get a diversity of everything there and then we'll put it in ethanol and send it back down to Guelph.

  What will happen is they'll DNA barcode everything and they do that in a variety of different ways. They'll either do it individually, where they do one little organism at a time, and there's also metabarcoding where they would take this whole thing and barcode it all and from that, they'll kind of sort through it and pick everything out.

  Look at these little guys here in the background. I mean looking at them here, they just look like little specks, but then back there you see they're full-bodied organisms. And I find it very interesting how even just a little drop of water can contain as much life as what's back on the screen behind me.

  I've always been interested in insects ever since I was a little kid. I've been doing this work since back in 2019 and it's now 2022. I've definitely had a positive impact. Like I think CHARS has definitely had a positive impact for me.

  My experience, it's definitely positive because I've learned so much, not just about the ecosystem here and including these invertebrates in the back, but I've also learned a lot about myself and what I enjoy to do. I do feel like I'm contributing to science when I do this because there is not really a reference library for DNA for the insects up in the Arctic. I do feel that it is important work.