When disturb, some species of isopods roll up into a ball. Your task is to plan

Question

When disturb, some species of isopods roll up into a ball. Your task is to plan and execute an experiment examining the behavior of the isopod. Determine the following:

What should you do first?

After watching the isopods for a while, describe their structure , behavior, and any individual differences. Visit the NOAA website (http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/isopod.html) and read more abut the definition of isopods.

What question could you pose?

Descive the design of your experiment, indicating the variables, controls, hypothesis and repeated measures.

Explanation / Answer

Isopods are marine invertebrates that belong to the phylum crustacean , which includes crabs and shrimp.

They are one of the most morphologically diverse of all the crustacean groups and come in many different shapes and sizes, and live in many different types of habitat.

Most of the isopods live in the ocean and breathe using their pleopods to ‘breathe’ by gas exchange. Isopods that live on land have developed their pleopods to include an air sac that functions as gas exchange organ.

As isopods live in many differents habiat, experiment can be designed to check if they prefer wet conditions over dry conditions. To do this an experiment can be designed where the behaviour of the isopods can be compared between those that are kept in chambers that recreate humid conditions to one that resemple dry arid conditions.

Variable that can be measured can include

- if isopods appear in groups or as individuals

- how fast they move

- how do the ybehave when flipped over

THe control required for this experiment is to perform the variable measurements on isopods that a grown in petri dishes and that are healthy. Once these measurements are recoded, variable measurements for test conditions i.e. dry and wet conditions can be made. Variable measurements should be made atlest three times to determine statistical significane.

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