Research Project Update by Hannah Zaini, Tien Pham, Karley Quibilan, & Auryana Ashoori
In our first research project, we were going to examine the rate of brown planaria growth depending on the different ways we cut them and their diet. We changed our experiment due to not being able to obtain our brown planaria in time
In this new experiment, we are researching pill-bugs in two different parts. In part A, we are examining the pill-bugs in a 4 way choice chamber that contains soil with water, pesticide, fertilizer, and coffee grounds. In part B, we are testing the effects of different concentrations of fertilizer in 4 cups that include a control with water, low concentration, medium concentration, and high concentration.
Part A: Pill-bug Choice Chamber
Hypothesis: Different substances in the soil will affect the behavior of the pill-bugs.
Prediction: The pill-bugs will visit the water or the fertilizer the most.
The trends we have found in part A is that the pill-bugs seemed to visit and stay in the water chamber the most in comparison to the others. Another trend we found was that the pill-bugs did not seem to like the coffee grounds chamber and did not visit there often. One reason why this is the case might be because we had a very high amount of coffee grounds, about half coffee grounds and half soil. The trends we found in part B was that none of them died and they all seemed to be healthy. To state it simply, there was not really a trend for part B.
The trends we have found in part A is that the pill-bugs seemed to visit and stay in the water chamber the most in comparison to the others. Another trend we found was that the pill-bugs did not seem to like the coffee grounds chamber and did not visit there often. One reason why this is the case might be because we had a very high amount of coffee grounds, about half coffee grounds and half soil. The trends we found in part B was that none of them died and they all seemed to be healthy. To state it simply, there was not really a trend for part B.
 |
| The molted exoskeleton of one of our pill-bug
One error observed in part A was the concentration used in fertilizer and pesticide because both chambers were visited the most within ten minutes. The same error occured in part B of our experiment where could have used a higher concentration of fertilizer that could have affect the pill-bugs significantly. Twice we had to add more fertilizer to each container in order to observe the death of some pill-bugs but this could have allowed the pill-bugs to acclimate to the change and higher concentration of fertilizer; therefore potentially affecting our data..In addition to part B, we could have part more effort in controlling the size of pill-bugs used in each environment as well as have more control over the humidity of each container. We had realized the twice that the containers where too dry, so had to add more water to each of the containers which also would have diluted our fertilizer concentration.
Questions for other groups:
|
It's possible that the pill bugs spent so much time in the pesticide chamber because pesticides have chemicals that attract insects. It would have been really interesting if they hadn't been drawn to that particular soil type, because that could have meant that they had some kind of resistance to the chemicals being used. In terms of fertilizer, I'm not sure if the elements typically found in it (like Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus) would have any negative influence on the bugs. The fact that both the fertilizer and pesticide chambers were visited in the fist 10 minutes may not mean anything. I noticed during my work with them that they kind of wandered around a little bit before any kind of pattern started to become clear.
ReplyDeleteHi Auryana's Group,
ReplyDeleteOur group thought about doing pill bugs, however; due to timing of reproduction we decided not to. Our group measured the reproduction rate of daphnia, but we also had to abandon one of our original planes. We wanted to measure mortality rate, we found out they disintegrate to fast to see them. I was wondering why you predicted that pill bugs would not like coffee? I also wondered why in your error section you said that you used to much fertilizer. That is still data. Thank you for the post.