1. Lumbriculus Variegatus Stimulant Lab
Kirk Ellison, Bryce Pritchard, Jessy Cruz
Intro: This lab is a study about the effects a stimulant would have on a BlackWorms
heart rate in a minute. The stimulant will be given in non-lethal dosages to the worm,
all in an effort to show the effects of chemicals that are added to our soil, air, and water-ways.
Hopefully this experiment will give future insight on the harmful effects of chemicals on wildlife,
since worms share common characteristics with all living organisms such as plants, mammals, amphibians, etc.
Question: Does adding a stimulant to Lumbriculus Variegatus
affect the pulse rate of the animal?
Hypothesis: If a stimulant is applied to L.Variegatus then the
heart rate of the creature will increase and have more pulsations per minute
than the control group which has no added substances
Independent Variable: The stimulant that is added to the specimen
Dependent Variable: The PPM (Pulses Per Minute) of L.Variegatus
Constants:
Species of the worm
Relative age of the worm
Amount of time for pulse count (One minute)
Temperature of the worms at the time of testing
Materials: Materials you will need to conduct this experiment are,
Blackworm with stimulant added (50)
Pipette
Microscope
Stop-watch
Blackworm with no added chemicals (50)
Non-depression coverslips
Procedure: The procedure you will be copying is as follows;
Place stimulant affected worm on coverslip
Locate the worm on low-power
After worm is located switch to medium-power for better viewing
Start timer and count pulsations of blood for one minute
Once the timer is up, record pulsations on a data-chart
Once data is recorded place worm in a recovery dish of spring water
Repeat steps 1-6 ten times
After you have tested ten stimulant worms, you will test the springwater worms
Place stimulant free worm on coverslip
Repeat steps 9-14 ten times
Create data charts and tables, compare data, and begin your conclusion of the experiment
Conclusion: In conclusion, we tested to see if adding a stimulant to L.Variegatus affected its heart-rate. According to our data, my hypothesis is correct in saying that the stimulant increased the worms PPM. My data table of the stimulant group has an average heart-rate of 28.5 pulsations per minute, this is 7 pulses faster than the group of worms that were not subjected to the stimulant. Limits of this experiment were that we only tested 10 worms, to obtain more accurate and conclusive results more worms should be tested in future versions of this experiment. The only error, or trouble that we encountered during the experiment was that the Black Worm tended to be very active and stressed under the coverslip, and was proven to be very difficult to count without having to reposition the specimen. Ways to improve this experiment for future testings would be to test different stimulants, and amounts of stimulants, also we suggest that more worms from a much larger worm-bank be tested, to obtain more accurate ad averaged results and to eliminate the chance of testing the same worm twice in a row.
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