I attended the Sunday 12-4 section of the Bioblitz studying Microbes.

Honestly, I really wasn’t sure what to expect from Bioblitz.  I haven’t taken any science classes in college, and I didn’t really understand what we were doing at Bioblitz or why.  However, our “guide” for the Microbes portion was an awesome professor from Brooklyn college.   In actuality, one of the things I enjoyed the most was just listening to her talk about her career and how many times she changed her focus–yet still ended up doing something she loves.  She transitioned from a path to NASA and astrobiology to the biology of organisms in extreme environments to microbiology and ecology.  She was very personable and a great public speaker.

We ended up walking all over the botanical garden and taking soil samples so that researchers could later extract microbial DNA from the soil samples, categorize them through a computerized sorting system, and determine microbial diversity at the botanical gardens.  It was a little different from other groups, since we didn’t use iNaturalist or actually get to “see” any of the organisms our group was named after.  But, once again, our guide made the trip interesting, fun, and knowledgeable.  I learned a lot about bacteria specifically, which is interesting for me as–even though I haven’t taken science in college–AP Biology was one of my favorite high school classes and I still retain an interest in it.  I thought it was really cool specifically learning that bacteria can actually communicate with each other through a process called “quorum sensing.”  Bacteria use this process to stay dormant en masse and reproduce until they’re sure they have enough individuals to flood their host’s immune system enough for a full-body take-over all at the same time.

Bioblitz wasn’t what I expected, but it was interesting and I had a good enough time to not regret it.