The Effects of Light and Dark Areas on a Pill Bug's Behavior over Time

The purpose of our experiment is to test animal behavior and reactions to a change in environment. Our guiding question is, “Why do living organisms respond to environmental factors?” This is basically a question that is asking why living things will react a certain way to environmental changes. The task to answer this question is to experiment with changing environmental factors with pill bugs.

The lab handout provided by the instructor was used as a guideline to conduct this experiment. The only difference was the organism used and data collection period. For this experiment, pill bugs and crickets were utilized. Also, data was collected for a period of 12 minutes.

The dependent variable is pulsation rates of L. variegatus before and after they were in the treatments. The standardized variable of this experiment would be the temperature of the surroundings of the L. variegatus, the three pulsation rates taken for each worm before and after the treatments, and also the amount of time each worm was kept in their respective treatments. The level of treatment for this experiment would be ten because of the six different concentration treatments of caffeine and nicotine along with the four household drugs. The sample size of the experiment differed from some treatments to other. For the three different concentrations of caffeine and nicotine, the sample size was 18 black worms each. The sample size of the control treatment of week 1 was 6 black worms. 12 black worms were used for the control of week 2, decaffeinated coffee and instant coffee. 11 black worms were used for the tea treatment and 15 were used for the tobacco treatment. There were three replications of the pulsation rate readings per worm before and after the treatment. With all this information we were able to get the results we got.

Pill bugs live in an outside environment where they are able to get the necessary amount of energy from organic matter. This environment is where water and organic matter is plentiful. In there natural habitat, pill bugs are found in dark, damp places. Living in moist places is important for pill bugs so they can take in enough water, and if water is not available, they group together to prevent water loss. Pill bugs most often live in dark places because they have a negative photo taxis. Darker places also tend to be cooler and damper. Each experiment connected to how the pill bugs would behave in a certain environment. We were able to test these experiments in a laboratory way to see if the natural environments were also true.

The hypothesis that was tested was pill bugs are use to the cooler temperature of the room and natural soil would travel a greater distance once they were in a hotter environment. The hypothesis is rejected on the basis that the p-value of .760 is greater than .05. Furthermore, figure 3 supports this rejection, since the averages are very close to each other and their error bars completely overlap. This rejection means that once the pill bugs where in the hotter environment there was not difference in their behavior compared to the cooler room temperature environment; they did not travel longer distances. However looking at bugs D, F G and H in figure 2, there is a difference in distance traveled that appears to be greater than

Based on the data, the number of pill bugs on the dark side is higher at almost every minute compared the number of bugs on the light side. In the beginning, the pill bugs are evenly spread out on both sides. However, as time goes on, the number of pill bugs on the dark side increased rapidly, while the number on the light side decreases. Based on the graph, starting at about three minutes, the number of bugs on the dark side begins to increase significantly. The pill bugs quickly react and choose a best fit environment for themselves. Eventually, at nine minutes there are nine pill bugs on the dark side and only one on the light side. At the end of ten minutes, all ten of the bugs are on the dark side. If the experiment went on for a longer

The structural features of the pill bug allows it to have advantages over other organisms. The pillbugs multi-segmented body allows it to roll into a ball if it feels threatened or in danger in order to protect its self. Another advantage of have a multi-segmented body is it allows the pillbug to semi curl to flip its self back over if it is knocked down. The antennae is used to sense the environment around it, even if it is in ball shape form. The advantages of this is the pillbug will know whether or not it is safe to come out of its ball shape form, if it had been threatened earlier. The antennae also allows the pillbugs to send signals to one another, it is a source of communication between them. The color of the pill

This experiment was performed to observe the taxis and kinesis of certain organisms. This is important because the organism’s survival and ability to reproduce depends on how they orient to stimuli using senses. We investigated the behavior of pill bugs to determine if they’ll move towards or away from the vinegar through smell. If I place pill bugs in a behavior tray with different chambers, then they’ll move away from the chambers that contains vinegar. A behavior tray with 5 chambers is used and 2 were control while the other 2 has cotton balls with a few drops of vinegar on it. 5 pill bugs are positioned in the center of the chambers and is covered with a transparent cover to observe the organisms for 10 minutes. Results had shown the class

One sowbug was then placed in the 3cm gap of the container and 30 seconds was started on the stopwatch. When time was completed we observed which side, grass or sand, the sowbug had preferred. Then, the sowbug was removed and a new one was placed in the container. The same steps were taken for each of the 20 bugs.

To stay consistent with and avoid error, the number of changing variables will be as close to 1 as possible; the only variable being externally manipulated in this experiment would be bean beetle size in two of the populations. (I.E: One group is a random control group of 10 beetles, one group is a variable group with the 10 smallest size beetles, and one groups is a variable group with the 10 largest size beetles.)

2. Place 10 randomly selected sowbugs in each of the 3 empty tin bowls for 3 minutes to allow them to acclimate to the environment.

Acidity increases by ten times for one pH level increase. Soil pH is a major constraint on plant growth. Since plants are the base of the ecosystem, pillbugs may be affected by the pH change as well. Soil acidity can be assisted by addition of certain other plants, like AM fungi, or the addition of basic materials (Kawahara, et. al., 2016). We decided to investigate which pH level pillbugs naturally preferred. We created three different choice chambers that had pH levels of 5, 7, and 9. This experiment will test if pH has an effect on pillbug choice of habitat.We predicted that there will be more pillbugs in the choice chamber with a pH of 7 because a pH level of 5.5 to 7 is considered to be the normal, natural environment of pillbugs. Usually, the pH that pillbugs are found in are 5.5 to 7 (Kawahara, et. al., 2016). In each habitat, the number of pillbugs will be counted every minute for 15 minutes. If a pillbug is in between chambers during the counting, they may be counted for the chamber to which they are

It is possible that the temperature at which the flies were kept dropped significantly below 20 degrees Celsius; this could have caused the death of some of the files or slowed down their growth and reproduction rate. This would result in there being fewer flies. This problem could be overcome in further experiments by using a larger heating device with a more responsive thermostat to keep the Fly house within the recommended temperature range for D. melanogaster.

In this experiment, we tested three different environments, soil, sand, and a leafy mixture to see which one a pill bug would prefer the most. Originally, we believed that the pill bug would find the leafy substance to be most favorable. Five pill bugs and then a single pill bug was placed in the center so that it could select one of the substrates. The data collected at the end of the experiment opposed our original hypothesis as we discovered that the most favored environment was the soil. This finding could correlate with the dark color of the soil closely matching the color of the pill bug or the moisture in the soil.

The experiment was done on Sarophaga Crassipalpis, a species that enters a period of developmental/reproductive inactivity called diapause to avoid unfavorable environmental conditions, regulated by neuroendocrine system in insects. The experiment was performed under both nondiapause and diapause conditions. During the rearing stage, nondiapause conditions for the flesh fly pupae were put under long day conditions of 15 hours light and 9 hours dark in 25 degree Celsius temperatures. Diapause conditions were under short day conditions of 12 hours light and 12 hours dark at that same temperature. Resulting offspring were same light conditions at 20 degrees Celsius.