Research-Update: Pill bugs experiment
Research Project Blog Assignment #2
Research Project update: snapshot of your data/challenges/surprises
10 points
Hypothesis
Pill bugs will have a preference of environment when exposed to multiple mixtures of soil. We predict that pillbug will prefer the normal damp soil.
Discussions/Updates
Figure.1 The two table shows number of pill bugs in four different environment within five minutes per trial.
According to our data from Figure 1. over the past two weeks, there are some trends that has been shown to be contradicting with our prediction, which is that the pill-bugs will prefer normal damp soil over any other condition. The independent variables of this experiment were regular soil, soil mixed with ethanol, soil mixed with lemon juice, and soil mixed with nicotine. So far, we have found that there were more pill-bug in the ethanol chamber compare to any other ones with an average of 2 pill-bugs in the first trial, 3 pill-bugs in the second, and 3 pill-bugs in the last trial. Following the ethanol chamber would be the chamber that had lemon juice mixed with soil with an average of 2 pill-bug in the first trial, 3 pill-bug in the second trial, and 1 pill-bug on average in the last trial. The pill-bug has shown to have no interest to chamber with regular damp soil with an average of 1 pill-bug in the second trial and 0 pill-bug on first and last trial. There were many challenges to over and faced throughout the experiment.
Looking at the trials of pill bugs, there seems to be no distinct soil that provides enough evidence to establish a preference. Although ethanol yielded a better average than the rest of the substances, we have not calculated chi squared to reveal the true values. Knowing that they are able to thrive in contaminated environments, this may support the idea that they do not have a preference. Some of the challenges of running this experiment included making sure that the pill bugs were all able to walk once we opened up the gates to the soil. On average there were about 1-2 pill bugs stuck in the middle on their backs. We helped assist them to give them a chance to pick a soil within the given time. Another point that is important is the fact that they are lab grown and have not been exposed to real contaminated environment. This may drive them towards those environments only out of curiosity.
In the error analysis section of our discussion, we have a lot to discuss. Our group made sure to have accurate measurements of the amount of dirt, ethanol, nicotine, lemon juice, and water used for the four environments. There is a possibility that any of these amounts could have differed slightly in between the two days that we performed our experiment. This error in accuracy could have resulted in the data being not as similar throughout every experiment. However, we can only assume that there was not a great enough difference for the pillbugs to notice. Another error that could have occurred in our experiment would have been using the same pillbugs for different experiments. We did not have quite enough pillbugs to make sure we were using “fresh” ones in each trial, and had to use some that had already participated in previous trials. This could have resulted in data that may have been different had the pillbugs not been exposed to different environments previously. On our second day of experimentation, we found that our pillbugs were taking longer to gravitate towards a certain environment. This could have been due to exposure to different chemicals, or the facts that the pillbugs may have been fatigued. Anyway, the inactivity of the pillbugs could have resulted in different data than had they been alert and wandering around more.
Questions
- Were there any group that conducted experiments with pill-bugs, that shown solid evidence of preference towards a single type of environment?
- Were the pill-bugs as responsive as the first week of lab compare to the second week of lab?
- Any variables that could’ve been improved or change so far in the experiment?
We had very similar findings: our pill bugs were fatigued on the second and third day trials too, we also recycled pill bugs and were wondering if this would skew the results and during our short-term study we did not see a noticeable trend in preference. Our extended long-term (2-5 days) trials showed pillbugs/potato bugs had a preference to the control environment.
ReplyDeleteHi group,
ReplyDeleteYour data looks interesting, as your findings show that there is no exact preference for the pill bugs. It's hard to control all variables in the way you predicted, as concentrations and types of chemical are varying. We are doing science, so it's normal to have some human errors and unpredictable results. However, it looks like you did a very hard work trying to control variables. The findings that there are some pill bugs lost or confused are interesting too, and could lead our thinking that pill bugs might not prefer any of those environments . Great work!
We also had the same constraint with the amount of “fresh” pillbugs we could use for the experiment. My group used pillbugs for our research as well, but we only saw a little bit of preference with the pillbugs that were not exposed to the solutions/environments. While the ones that were exposed to them for a few days did not try to move as much. The pillbugs in the second week did slow down when compared to the behaviors in the first week, but only for the ones that were exposed to the solutions that we tested them with. I like how your group included “lost and confused” as one of the data.
ReplyDeleteHi guys,
ReplyDeleteI think many of the groups chose to do the pill bug experiment. I found that you guys trying to change the pH of the soil and wanted to test the choice of the pill bugs. The data you collected and the table you made were really clear. I am curious about whether you guys have some future work? Or I mean did you guys figure out any way to avoid the error you got this time?
So... seems like a lot of people favored pill-bugs for their experiment! They're perfect tiny subjects. My group also did pill-bugs surprisingly. We didn't test out pH, we tested out the different additives in soil that pill-bugs prefer or acclimate to. Our group tested out pesticide, fertilizer, and coffee grounds, the normal things you find in backyard grasses. We realized that pill-bugs tend to just go with their senses. They visited pesticide a few times and actually chilled there for a while. There wasn't any "preference" that pill-bugs wanted. Hopefully your guys research experiment turned up good and no pill-bugs died...but that would defeat the purpose.
ReplyDeleteGreat job on your project! We also worked with pill bugs and found that they were not only more tired the second day of testing (several even chose to not to participate), but they even changed color, probably because they were kept out of the sun. Do you think you would have gotten more accurate results if you ran every test on the same day?
ReplyDelete