Daphnia Heart Rate and Kcl
Juanita Sarmiento
Daphnia Ecotoxicology Lab Report
Introduction Ecosystems have a way of maintaining themselves under ordinary conditions but when a new factor is added that will most likely threaten the environment action needs to be put forth. Our environment is affected by many pollutants on a daily bases forming a threat to natural stability. For example some of the most polluted parts of the environment are bodies of water like that explained in our lab. Once pollution occurs animals can be affected in many ways even to the brink of death. In the lab the stream is getting pumped with salty potassium filled water that can kill daphnia, habitants of the stream, if the concentration gets too high. To prevent this a real-time assay can be performed. This is a short timed test that we use to measure the effect of pollutant on organism by finding the smallest concentration possible that could still be a bother. This is a valuable tool because we can get direct results from a living organism by detecting stress signals all in a short period of time allowing us o fix the problem quicker. Using an organism for the assay is the best choice because there are many variables that can be used to identify stress on the subject because of a specific input. Materials and Methods Everything is kept the same in every experiment except when concentration differences need to be changed. Meaning all lighting, heating, vibration daphnia numbers will not change to make sure there are minimal changes and differences in the experiments. The sizes of the daphnia are also better to be kept around the same. Daphnia are really quick so picking something to measure in a two-hour interval made it easier to narrow it down to heart rate. Since we can control their space, meaning less area of movement we can see their heart better. This also meant it wouldn’t allow us to measure other things that require a larger area of movement which were the majority
Daphnia Ecotoxicology Lab Report
Introduction Ecosystems have a way of maintaining themselves under ordinary conditions but when a new factor is added that will most likely threaten the environment action needs to be put forth. Our environment is affected by many pollutants on a daily bases forming a threat to natural stability. For example some of the most polluted parts of the environment are bodies of water like that explained in our lab. Once pollution occurs animals can be affected in many ways even to the brink of death. In the lab the stream is getting pumped with salty potassium filled water that can kill daphnia, habitants of the stream, if the concentration gets too high. To prevent this a real-time assay can be performed. This is a short timed test that we use to measure the effect of pollutant on organism by finding the smallest concentration possible that could still be a bother. This is a valuable tool because we can get direct results from a living organism by detecting stress signals all in a short period of time allowing us o fix the problem quicker. Using an organism for the assay is the best choice because there are many variables that can be used to identify stress on the subject because of a specific input. Materials and Methods Everything is kept the same in every experiment except when concentration differences need to be changed. Meaning all lighting, heating, vibration daphnia numbers will not change to make sure there are minimal changes and differences in the experiments. The sizes of the daphnia are also better to be kept around the same. Daphnia are really quick so picking something to measure in a two-hour interval made it easier to narrow it down to heart rate. Since we can control their space, meaning less area of movement we can see their heart better. This also meant it wouldn’t allow us to measure other things that require a larger area of movement which were the majority