Carolina Natural Selection For AP Biology
Carolina Natural Selection for AP Biology
Lacey Bosher
Natural Selection is the environments’ favoring of a particular trait in a population. Organisms use many different methods to adapt to their environments. In this experiment one must use brine shrimp and salt water solutions to represent organisms and their environments. Some organisms like the brine shrimp adapt to changes in their environments. Brine shrimp eggs produce cysts when their environmental conditions aren’t being cooperative. Brine shrimp eggs grow hard and brown when their environment does not have enough oxygen to support them. This also happens when there is too much salt content in their environment. When the eggs become hard and brown, they can be kept for long periods of time in a dry, oxygen- free environment. When the cyst is returned to its normal environment, it continues on with its development and eventually hatches. Brine shrimp are the perfect organisms to do experiments on because they only require a short time for development. The person conducting the experiment must use 5 beakers, each with different amounts of salt in them. The point of the experiment is to see how the brine shrimp eggs respond in each dish of salt concentrate. Once the salt and water have been combined, one must place approximately twenty brine shrimp on a microscope slide. After twenty four hours, some of the brine shrimp eggs should have hatched while some have partially hatched or not hatched yet. This must be done at the twenty four hour mark and the forty eight hour mark. The data should be written down on the chart given in the experiment papers. The hatching viability must be found by adding the number of hatched eggs at twenty four hours and the hatched eggs at forty eight hours and dividing it by the initial amount of eggs placed in the petri dish.
Word count: 310
Sources
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/natural-selection.htm
Lacey Bosher
Natural Selection is the environments’ favoring of a particular trait in a population. Organisms use many different methods to adapt to their environments. In this experiment one must use brine shrimp and salt water solutions to represent organisms and their environments. Some organisms like the brine shrimp adapt to changes in their environments. Brine shrimp eggs produce cysts when their environmental conditions aren’t being cooperative. Brine shrimp eggs grow hard and brown when their environment does not have enough oxygen to support them. This also happens when there is too much salt content in their environment. When the eggs become hard and brown, they can be kept for long periods of time in a dry, oxygen- free environment. When the cyst is returned to its normal environment, it continues on with its development and eventually hatches. Brine shrimp are the perfect organisms to do experiments on because they only require a short time for development. The person conducting the experiment must use 5 beakers, each with different amounts of salt in them. The point of the experiment is to see how the brine shrimp eggs respond in each dish of salt concentrate. Once the salt and water have been combined, one must place approximately twenty brine shrimp on a microscope slide. After twenty four hours, some of the brine shrimp eggs should have hatched while some have partially hatched or not hatched yet. This must be done at the twenty four hour mark and the forty eight hour mark. The data should be written down on the chart given in the experiment papers. The hatching viability must be found by adding the number of hatched eggs at twenty four hours and the hatched eggs at forty eight hours and dividing it by the initial amount of eggs placed in the petri dish.
Word count: 310
Sources
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/natural-selection.htm