Seventeen-year-old Ryan wanted to understand whether the popular insect repellant DEET, worn by many tourists to ward off mosquitoes, had any effect on the dinoflagellates in these bays. His investigation, outlined in the essay The Effects of DEET on the Bioluminescent Dinoflagellate, Pyrocystis fusiformis, earned Ryan one of this year’s Young Naturalist Awards.

Over a year ago, Rachel braved cold winds and snow to study winter insects called gallflies, winning a 2010 Young Naturalist Award for the research essay she wrote about their complex life cycles. In the summer, Rachel set out again—this time, to search cow pastures for coprophilous beetles, known commonly as dung beetles, which would become the subject of another research project.

Fifteen-year-old Sara knew that vegetable oils could be used as biofuels. But when she learned that algae might offer an alternative fuel source, she decided to learn more about these organisms’ potential to supply energy without using precious crop land.

Surveying gaps in current research, Sara decided to explore how growing conditions of algae might affect their oil yields. Sara received a 2011 Young Naturalist Award for her experiment, which she describes in her essay Enhancing Algae Biofuels: The Effects of Nitrogen Limitation and Carbon Dioxide Infusion on Nannochloropsis oculata.

Seventeen-year-old Joshua had fond memories of swimming in Arkansas’s Strawberry River, a popular site for community gatherings and picnics. But after the construction of a wastewater treatment facility upstream, no one would enter the waters. “The wonderland where I spent so many hours as a child is deserted now, and nobody swims or fishes in that section of the river,” Joshua would later write. “I decided to find out for myself if the [facility] had indeed contaminated the water, or if the community had overreacted.”

When 12-year-old Katelyn took a field trip to a butterfly exhibit, she wondered why butterflies chose certain flowers over others when it came time to feed.

The question led Katelyn to conduct an experiment that tracked painted lady butterflies’ flower preferences. Her project, which earned her a 2011 Young Naturalist Award, is described in the essay Butterfly Buffet: The Feeding Preferences of Painted Ladies.