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Orconectes Propinquus Experiment

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Orconectes propinquus is an ectotherm where its body temperature varies with the environment. Their metabolic rate can be affected in response to change in temperature. Decreasing body temperature causes change in the physical chemistry of the cell to reduce metabolic activity. (Johnston and Dunn, 1987) When the body temperature increases, metabolic rate increases exponentially (Hill et al., 2012). This suggests an allometric relationship between metabolic rate and body mass.

Metabolic rate is measured by the rate of oxygen consumption and oxygen consumption rate changes over time during the experiment. The crayfish acclimated to warm temperature increased the oxygen consumption whereas the crayfish acclimated to cold temperature decreased the oxygen consumption. In our experiment, there was no significant effect of acclimation temperature on oxygen consumption. The warm and cold-acclimated crayfish showed similar mean oxygen consumption rate despite different acclimation temperatures (Fig.1). Also, the P …show more content…

As body mass increases, the metabolic rate increases which means oxygen consumption rate increases as well. But increase in mass doesn’t directly proportional to metabolic rate. Body mass and metabolic rate show the allometric relationship. Also, changing enzyme activity such as altering the structure of hemocyanin can affect the binding affinity of oxygen. As temperature decreases, oxygens are more dissolved in cold temperature. Increased water temperature, decrease in the level of dissolved oxygen in water (Elsevier) This is because of the modulation of hemocyanin oxygen binding affinities or different hemocyanin proteins at high or low temperatures. Hemomyacnin performs better at cold temperature. According to the data, there was more oxygen consumption at cold temperature. Since there is a large amount of oxygen content dissolved in cold temperature, crayfish more likely to adapt to cold

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