Laboratory 11. Animal Behavior II. Purpose
The purpose of the animal behavior lab was to understand the concept of distributing organisms in a resource gradient. This lab was also made to help us differentiate between kinesis and taxis. After completing the animal behavior lab, we should be able to describe aspects of animal behavior as far as its orientation behavior, agonistic behavior, dominance display, and the way it mates or who it chooses to mate with. We should also understand how adaptive pill bugs are to the different environments we tested. How do pill bugs adapt to the different environments as far as (wet, dry, hot, cold, light, dark, etc.) III. Background
This lab has to do with ethology which is the study of an animal’s behavior, and it has two categories: learned and innate. We focused in on the orientation behavior which showed which environments the pill bugs favored. Kinesis is a random movement in which the organisms don’t respond to the stimulus. Taxis is when the organism/animal moves towards or away from the stimulus. Also within ethology is an animal’s agonistic behavior. This behavior shows how animals responded to one another through aggression. Mating also was another factor, and this showed through the actions of the pill bugs when they were trying to find and mate with another one of the pill bugs. IV. Data and Observations Time (Mins.) | Number in Wet Chamber | Number in Dry Chamber | 0 | 5 | 5 | 0.5 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 1.5 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 2.5 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 3.5 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 2 | 4.5 | 8 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 5.5 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 6.5 | 8 | 2 | 7 | 8 | 2 | 7.5 | 7 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 8.5 | 8 | 2 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 9.5 | 6 | 4 | 10 | 5 | 5 |
Independent Variable: time
Dependent Variable: # of pill bugs (wet and dry)
Number of Pill Bugs vs. Time