Essay On Daphnia

In the hustle and bustle off everyday life, we as human tend to forget just how much man made pollutants we are letting out into the world. Not only do these fumes linger in the air we breathe but also run off into various water sources. Not only are we harming ourselves but also the living things that call the water their home. Some of the biggest pollutants that effect our water systems today are antifreeze from cars, cigarette ash and not to mention pesticides that run off from the fields. We know the effects of these harmful chemical substances can be deadly to humans but how does it alter the lives of the creatures living in the water? Some of the smallest living species in the water is known as Daphnia Magna. Similar to the size of a flea, how would chemicals so harmful to humans react to something as small as daphnia? Not only do these organisms need clean water to thrive and function properly but they need pure water to live. If daphnia are exposed to poor water quality from manmade factors such as car antifreeze, …show more content…
In one petri dish I used 15ml of pure distilled water (the typical environment of daphnia) as my control to look back on and compare to my experimental group my altered variables. In my three other dishes I started with 15 ml of pure water, 2-3 daphnia, and introduced 2 ml of harmful substance ( Prestone :antifreeze,Bayer Advanced: pesticide, and Malaboro :cigarette ash). After exposing the daphnia to these chemicals, I observed each petri dish and studied the change in behavior, appearance, and function every five minutes over a time span of a half an hour. I rated the change on a scale of 0 to 5. 1 being death, 3 being normal, and 5 being change in behavior and appearance. I averaged the rate for each experiment based on the daphnia’s behavior and appearance which typically reacted the same