Mealworm Essay

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Introduction
For this project, we were supposed to look at how different environmental factors affected the growth of mealworms for nine week time period. Groups chose different environmental factors including food source, water source, temperature, and light. Our group chose to look at how well mealworms survived in different food sources, such as chicken feed, rabbit food, and oatmeal. Mealworms survive best in chicken feed, so our goal was to test to other food sources (oatmeal and rabbit food) to determine which food source is equal to or better than chicken feed. This goal was achieved by having three separate cups for each food type to insure reproducibility and validity of our results.
Before becoming a beetle, a mealworm goes through four stages of metamorphosis (“Mealworm Life Cycle,” n.d.), which lasts three to five months (“Darkling Beetle/Mealworm Information,” n.d.). These stages include: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The amount of time spent in each life stage depends on environmental conditions such as food, water, and temperature. During the first stage of life, time is spent inside an egg. The small, white egg is the size of a dust particle and bean-shaped, and the egg usually is covered up by dust and dirt because it is sticky. After one to four weeks, the egg hatches and larva will be seen. At this stage, the organism can be called a mealworm. The larva stage lasts about eight to ten weeks. When the egg hatches, the larva is small in size, but will eventually grow from one to one and half inches long. During this life stage, the mealworm sheds its outer shell to grow and eats. The mealworm will molt one last time, and during that time the mealworm will turn into a pupa. The pupa stage lasts one to three weeks...

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...eational fishing. Our hypothesis was rejected because the mass of the mealworms from the oatmeal was more than that from those in rabbit food. A few errors we encountered included missing mealworms and leaving for a week due to spring break. For a few weeks, we noticed that we were missing a mealworm or two from a few of the cups and we did not find their bodies so we could only assume that they either managed to escape or they were eaten by another mealworm or beetle. As for leaving for spring break, we were gone for a week and were not able to add a fresh source of water for each of the cups. That could have been the reason why some of the mealworms died. For our project the mealworms were kept in a dark and somewhat cool cabinet. Overall, mealworms need to be kept in a warm and dry environment for them to grow efficiently (“Raising and Breeding Mealworms,” n.d.).

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