Tobacco Hornworm Growth on Selected Fruits of the Host Plants by Haney, Men, Nguyen, Smith, Swan
Authors: Haney, Men, Nguyen, Smith, Swan
Abstract:
The goal of this experiment was to analyze the growth of tobacco hornworms when given different food sources. It was hypothesized that food type would influence the weight of the hornworms, and it was predicted that the hornworms would grow heaviest on the control food that came with them from the store. For our experiment we divided the hornworms into groups and fed them either the diet they were purchased with as a control, green bell pepper, tomatillo, eggplant, tomato, dried tobacco leaves, or a random non-host Geum plant. They were fed for 8 days, and they were weighed on day 1, day 6, and day 8. Overall the bell pepper has a higher growth rate but the eggplant has higher growth rate with the higher number of survivals. The control doesn’t have larger growth rate because the foods might have been dried out. Even though they are tobacco hornworm but they didn’t do well in our tobacco groups since it’s processed and dried. The non host flowering plant and tobacco groups saw higher rates of death in the hornworms than the other food choices. In conclusion, different food sources and diets have different effect on the growth of hornworm. In other words, the hypothesis is supported by the data while the prediction is not.
Author’s Contributions: JS did the introduction. MS did the methods. DH did the results. SM and NN did the discussion.
References:
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That's interesting that the bell pepper offered the highest growth but it sounds like it had a high frequency of death? I wonder if it's because they aren't usually exposed to it or if something else is going on internally. How did the food become dried from the store? was it left out for too long or was it supposed to be kept in specific conditions? That could be a source of error for your project if you executed everything else flawlessly :)
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting idea for a project and I can see how it could have significant practical implications, like when deciding whether or not to introduce a new species to an established ecosystem or designing a different experiment with tobacco hornworms or a similar organism. Did you notice anything qualitatively that distinguished the effect of different foods on the worms? Did, for example, their behavior or color change?
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