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Sowbug Lab Report

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The purpose of this experiment is to determine which stimuli sowbugs prefer more, moist or dark. However, to confirm that sowbugs prefer dark and moist environments we had to create an experiment to prove this. We proved sowbugs prefer dark environments by using a lamp to create a light environment and cardboard over half the petri dish to create the dark environment; the sowbugs chose the dark side. Then we proved sowbugs preferred moist environments over dry ones by creating a wet environment on one side and a dry environment on the other side of the petri dish. After our final experiment, we were able to determine that sowbugs prefer the dark stimuli over moist stimuli. Introduction Sowbugs, or Oniscus spp., are interesting creatures …show more content…

The first variable tested was phototaxis, the movement toward or away from light. To do this, we used an empty petri dish and filled the bottom of it with filter paper. We then added five sowbugs to the petri dish and placed a lid on top. After leaving the sowbugs alone for three minutes to get acclimated to their new environment, we placed a lamp directly over the petri dish. Then we laid a piece of cardboard over the petri dish to cover exactly half of it, leaving the other half exposed to the lamp. We want the cardboard to cover close to half of it as possible to make the data as accurate as possible. The lamp was then turned on and the number of sowbugs in the light and dark locations were recorded every minute for the next twelve minutes. As shown in Table 1, we determined that sowbugs are effected negatively by phototaxis. The second variable tested was hydrotaxis in sowbugs. To do this, we first removed the cardboard shade cover. We did this to remove the dark environment variable. This way the only variable being test is wet versus dry. We then opened the lid and placed drops of water on approximately half of the petri dish and placed the lid back on it. Then we recorded the number of sowbugs in both the wet and dry locations every minute for the next twelve minutes. As shown in Table 2, the sowbugs in our experiment were positively

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