Roly-poly Lab

Abstract: In this lab my partner and I learned about animal behavior. We tested to see if a roly-poly (pill bug) would have a behavior that made them favor an environment with sugary nutrients to one without nutrients.  By recording how many roly-polies were in each chamber we could determine the results.

Introduction:

The study of animal behavior is known as Ethology.  Behavior is the animals response to Animals behaviors can be sorted into two categories: learned and innate. Learned behaviors are ones such as flight and innate behaviors can be a dog drooling at a sight of food. Proximate behaviors are the closest explanation of to what is responsible for causing something. Ultimate behavior is a more specific exact analysis of why something is occurring. A proximate question would be: how was the bird able to sing? A ultimate question would be: why did the bird sing? Fixed action patterns are innate. They are a behavioral sequence that is instinctive and are patterns that can’t be divided and run to final completion. Examples of a fixed action pattern are Moths instantly dropping to the ground and folding their wings if they encounter the ultrasonic signals of a bat. Imprinting is any kind of learning at a young age that is independent of consequences of behavior. Imprinting is most common when the young animals acquire the behavioral characteristics of the parents. The proximate cause of young geese following it’s mother is that it sees it’s mother leaving and should follow out of instinct. The Ultimate cause is it needs to learn quickly and survive and the best chance is if they follow their mother. Kinesis is a movement that is random and is not in a specific direction in respect to the stimulus. Taxis is a movement towards or away from a stimulus. If a lizard moves towards the sunny spot on the ground that is Taxis. If it moves in random directions in the sun that is kinesis. Classical conditioning is a type of learning process that is produced through associations between naturally occurring stimulus and an environmental stimulus. This places a neutral signal before a naturally occurring reflex. The neutral signal can be the sound of a tone and the naturally occurring reflex was the dog salivating. The dog was trained through classical conditioning to associate the tone with the feeling of hunger. Unconditioned responses are ones that aren't learned and occurs naturally when there is an unconditioned stimulus. unconditioned stimuli just produce a natural and automatic result. When you smell food you become hungry is an example. 

Hypothesis: If more roly-polies are found in the honey chamber then the dry (control) chamber then the roly-polies have a behavior that makes them move to a more nutrient and sugar rich environment.

Materials:

·      2 chambers attached

·      2 pieces of filter paper

·      10 roly-polies

·      Some honey

·      A brush

Procedure:

1.      Set up the two chambers and soak one filter paper in honey. Place the filter papers in the chambers.

2.     Brush the roly-polies gently into the chambers and record the initial amount of bugs in each chamber

3.     Start recording minutes and checking how many are in each chamber every 30 seconds.

4.     At the end of 7 minutes stop and remove the roly-polies from the experiment.

Data:

Minutes	Honey Chamber	Dry Chamber
0	4	6
0.5	4	6
1	4	6
1.5	4	6
2	5	5
2.5	4	6
3	5	5
3.5	5	5
4	5	5
4.5	5	5
5	5	5
5.5	5	5
6	6	4
6.5	6	4
7	5	5

Conclusion:

The data showed us that the roly-polies have no behavior that makes them move to a sugary chamber over a dry one. At the beginning the roly-polies didn’t move for a long time. Maybe this was because of the initial shock of being placed in the chambers. Finally one did move to have an equal number on both sides. The equal number stayed consistent and only fluctuated by one bug. This shows that the group didn’t prefer one environment and moving behavioral towards it. Some possible errors we could have made are we dropped some water in the control chamber by accident so maybe moisture had an effect. We also could have not recorded the time for long enough to see movement.