This week in my research, I completed my second experiment. This experiment contained five treatments, each consisting of five juveniles and 20 megalopae. At the end of this experiment, only the original five juveniles in each treatment were left, all the megalopae were eaten. However, throughout the four days that this experiment was running, I checked on them a few times for updates. After one day, only two treatments had two megalopae alive. The rest of the treatments had none meaning that the juveniles ate all of them. The following day, the two treatments that had two megalopae did not have any megalopae anymore. Instead they both had six juveniles instead of five. This means that one of the two last remaining megalopae morphed into a juvenile and the other one was eaten. On the final day of the experiment, the new sixth juvenile was no longer existing. I hypothesize that since it was such a small juvenile that was still relatively small compared to the other five juveniles, it had no fighting chance and was eaten by the others. This experiment successfully showcased their cannibalistic behavior. The next experiment that I started this week was a redo from the experiment I did last week. The reason for a redo is because only two of the treatments had juveniles that ate the mussels. The other treatments had mussel that was not eaten. To prove that mussels are a valid food source for crabs, all treatments must have the juveniles eat the mussels. This experiment is vital to answering my research question.
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AuthorMy name is Juan Flores and I am an intern in Alan Shanks’ lab. I am from a small city in the Los Angeles County, Pico Rivera, California. I will be transferring to the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Fall, pursuing a Bachelors in Biology. Archives
August 2018
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