Essay about Brine Shrimp Lab

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Jieqi Mei
Ms.Rouse
APBio, period 5
Oct 27, 2015 Brine Shrimp Lab
Beginning Ideas:
Brine Shrimps are small unsubstantial-looking creatures of 1 cm that inhabits the Great Salt Lake. Without them, all birds that uses Great Salt Lake would be unable to get their nutrients. Another benefit of Brine Shrimps is that they clean the lake by getting rid of dirty contaminated water such as phosphorous, nitrogen, and other waste products. However, they really survive by eating microscopic organism and green algae. So what is the effect of light on a Brine shrimp? Knowing that they will float, forming tan streaks which covers the lake area during fall and winter, they will stay like this until the season gets warmed during spring. During spring, they will hatch once again. If we expose light on half of the tank and cover the other half of the tank, the Brine Shrimps will favor the light side by swimming there for the most part. Other variables of importance are pH, light, and oxygen. Light is necessary for hatching and may be beneficial for adult grow out. Also, it can definitely change the pH level if was kept for a period of time.

Tests:
Materials
clip on lamp
1 Thick paper
10 Brine Shrimps
1 Petri dish
Water
Pipette
Magnifying Glasses

Procedures

1. Place shrimps in petri dish #1.
2. Count 10 shrimps and put it into petri dish #2 by using a pipette.
3. Cover half of the petri dish #2 with a thick piece of paper so that the light won’t go through.
4. Use some lighting to brighten the other half of the petri dish, directly straight down.
5. Wait 3 minutes.
6. Use the magnifying glasses to measure how many shrimps are in the bright side of the petri dish. Subtract this value from the total to solve the amount of shrimp in the dark side.
7. Repeat these steps for total of 6 trials but changing the side the paper that is covering.

We manipulated the location where the light is shined, measuring the amount of shrimps on each side, and keeping the time (3 minutes) under controlled. However, there were a few changes, but the main actions were still taken place. This was where we had crunched time, shortening 5 minutes each trials to 3 minutes to fulfill our lab day. Instead of using 10 new shrimps for every trial, we switched the side that the light is showing to see if the shrimps will react to it, as in if they will react to the location where there is light. This was how we tested to see if light affects the Brine Shrimps

Observation and Data:
Trial
Location of the light shining minutes # of Brine Shrimps in the bright side
# of Brine Shrimps in the dark side
1
Left
3
3
7
2
Right
3
6
4
3
Left
3
7
3
4
Right
3
3
7
5
Left
3
3
7
6
Right
3
8
2

10-3=7 10-6=4 10-4=6 10-7=3 10-8=2

While dark side is quite consistent with the amount of shrimps for trial 1, 4, and 5, it is also tied for equal favor for both dark and light side despite the data didn’t show consistent amount of Brine Shrimps for the light side. Light side only showed consistent amount of shrimp for favoring dark side (trial 1, 4, and 5)

Claims and Evidence (including errors) :
Although the website, Carolina CareSheet, claims Brine shrimps are healthy when they are concentrated in the light, it is not entirely true. Light doesn’t affect Brine Shrimp despite the location where the spot is not covered because from the 6 trials, there are 3 trials (2, 3, and 6) where the shrimps favor light while the rest of the trials did not. Therefore, this shows there’s no relationship, refuting our hypothesis. However, there can be errors throughout the trials. Because we only used a few shrimp, it is not ideal that we have accurate data. We don’t know if some were cysts or hatched Nauplii. If we used around 40, we can have a rough estimate of each light or dark. The petri dish is very big to the shrimp, so swimming may take time. We should extend the time to 5 minutes each trial, so the shrimp
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