Salinity Tolerance Lab 3

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Diamonique Harris Dr. Amanda Glazier Biology 3244 Lab June 13, 2018 Salinity Tolerance Introduction: Salinity can be a major survival determining factor in marine organisms. The level of sensitivity to changes in salinity varies from organism to organism, which is why not all organism can survive in environment where the salinity fluctuates. Organisms can be characterized into two categories for tolerance of salinity, stenohaline and euryhaline. Stenohaline, are organisms that have the inability to tolerate fluctuating salinities and are mainly found in either freshwater or saltwater environments (NOAA) such as the open ocean and the deep sea. Whereas, the euryhaline are organisms that can tolerate large changes in salinity and are more common along shorelines and in estuaries, where rainfall and river runoff can create large fluctuation in salinity. Stenohaline organisms because it requires a lot of energy to adapt to constantly changing salinities (NOAA). In order for the stenohaline organisms to maintain their salt balance there are two mechanisms that they can use, osmoregulators and osmoconformers. The process is which an organism can control their concentrations of salts of water in internal fluids despite the levels of the surroundings. Osmoregulators maintain their internal salinity through the use of salt glands, kidneys and/or gills all of which cost an extreme amount of energy to regulate their fluids. As opposed to, osmoconformes change their internal salinities with respect to the changes in their external salinity. When the organism is hypertonic to its environment, water moves into the organism due to the internal salts in the organism being greater than the external environment. On the contrary, water is lost from the organism, when the organism becomes hypotonic to the
environment, in other words, the environment becomes saltier than the internal fluid of the organism. An example of an osmoregulating organism that can survive in high salinity is the aquatic crustaceans, brine shrimp Artemia . Due to the Artemia ability to absorb and excrete salts through their gills makes them perfect osmoregulators and ability to tolerate ranges of salinity. However, the Nucella lapillus , are osmoconformers and respond to large fluctuation in salinity by closing up their shells to prevent excessive dilution/desiccation of internal fluids. The purpose of this experiment is to get an understanding of the effects that salinity changes could have on osmoregulators and osmoconformers such as Artemia and Nucella lapillus (dogwhelks). In order to get a clearer understanding of osmoregulators and osmoconformers tolerance to salinity variances, the experiment was split into two parts: one is the pathway of the Artemia in varying salinities, and the second is the salinity tolerance in Artemia and dogwhelks ( Nucella lapillus ). Based upon the information known about osmoregulators and osmoconformers for the first part of the experiment of testing the Artemia pathway a null hypothesis was predicted as the Artemia will evenly disperse which means that they don’t have a preference for salinity. The first alternative hypothesis predicted was that the Artemia will go towards the higher salinity because that is the environment in which they are familiar with. The second alternative hypothesis predicted was that the Artemia will go towards the lower salinity because their bodies will not have to work as hard. For the second part of the experiment, a null hypothesis for the survival rate of the Artemia and dogwhelks to different salinities was predicted. The null hypothesis for Artemia was predicted as the Artemia will all die and show no preferences for salinity based on the fact that they are osmoregulators. The first alternative hypothesis was that the Artemia will
have better survival rates in all salinities compared to the dogwhelks. The second alternative hypothesis 2 was that the Artemia will have a higher survival rate in the higher intermediate salinity compared to the Artemia that survive in low salinity, because they are more tolerate to higher salinities. The null hypothesis for dogwhelks was that they will all survive and show no preferences for salinity based on the fact that they are osmoconformers. The first alternative hypothesis was that the dogwhelks will have lower survival rates in all salinities compared to the Artemia . Finally, the second alternative hypothesis was that the dogwhelks will higher rate of survival in intermediate salinities compared to dogwhelks that survive in higher or lower salinities. From these hypotheses the following experiment was conducted. Method: The experiment began with testing the behavioral response of Artemia to salinity gradients by first the plexiglass column being loaded with 350 ml of 50 ppt water and 350 ml of 35 ppt water into the separation funnel at the top. To keep the waters from mixing, the tubing must be on top of the layer and not within the 50 ppt layer. Once completed, the 17 ppt water was added to the separation funnel and slowly added to the top of the 35 ppt water layer. Resulting in 3 layers within the column, each with different densities and colors. Next, the Artemia was collected and placed into a beaker with a small amount of seawater, in order to maintain the salinity concentration, keep the brine shrimp alive and wash them out. The Artemia was slowly and gently added into the column by pouring the beaker against the wall of the column just above the water layer. The Artemia was then dribbled in 30 second increments, to prevent the
waters from mixing. The behavioral response was recorded indicating the direction the Artemia in that layer went. The experiment proceeded by testing the survival of Artemia and dogwhelks to differing salinities. 10 glass beakers were set up with seawater of different salinities: 0, 17, 35, and 50 ppt. Both species was then added to the varying treatments, 10 Artemia was added to each of the 5 beakers that were placed into a larger tub with the airstone placed in each to keep oxygen flowing into the beaker. The same was then repeated for 10 dogwhelks each being added to the 5 large glass beakers. A lid was placed on the beakers to prevent the dogwhelks from possibly moving out. At the end of day 1, 5 and 7 the number of alive organisms were counted. Data: Table 1: Artemia behavioral responses to 3 different salinity layers. Salinit y Level 0:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 17 ppt 0 -- -- -- 35 ppt -- -- -- -- 50 ppt 0 -- 0 -- -- -- -- 0 Table 2: Artemia : mean % of survival and standard deviation Salinity (ppt) Day 1 (Average % Survival) + SD Day 5 (Average % Survival) + SD Day 7 (Average % Survival) + SD 0 ppt 100 + 0 0 + 0 0 + 0 17 ppt 100 + 0 32.68 + 30.78 24.68 + 27.46 35 ppt 100 + 0 54.66 + 29.88 47.232 + 31.14 50 ppt 100 + 0 37.272 + 38.98 25.272 + 20.18
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