Pillbugs Lab

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For this lab investigation, our question was do pillbugs prefer vinegar or plain water in their environment? Our hypothesis was that if they were given the choice, then they would choose the water side because their natural environment is not as acidic as vinegar. After we tested this hypothesis, the data that we collected over the course of 20 minutes supported our theory. At the end of the first minute, there were 3 pillbugs on the vinegar side, and 37 pillbugs on the water side. Then, after 10 minutes, there were 4 pillbugs on the vinegar side, 30 pillbugs on the water side and 6 pillbugs that were missing. After 15 minutes, 4 pillbugs were on the vinegar side, 28 were on the water side and 8 were missing. Finally, at the end of the 20th minute, there were 3 pillbugs on …show more content…

There were approximately 8x the amount of pillbugs on the water side compared on the vinegar side. Many sources of error could have occurred during the experiment, however. One possible source of error was that about half of the pillbugs were actually sowbugs, an isopod crustacean that has extremely close relations with the the pillbug. The main difference is that sowbugs do not roll up. This could have been a source of error because the difference in the two species may have attributed to the preferences of the isopods in the experiment. A second possible source of error was uneven lighting on our experiment. We gave our best effort to control the lighting and background as much as possible so that the experiment would not be affected, but there could have been something that was overlooked because a classroom environment is not the easiest thing to control. The last source of error was something that could not have been avoided. As time goes on, the pillbugs could have slowed down their movements compared to when they were first dropped into the bin due to their natural

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