Influence of Abiotic Factors like pH, Temperature, and Light on Habitat Selection of Artemia franciscana
Introduction
Habitat selection is a behavioral decision concerning abiotic (non-living) factors in an environment, such as light, temperature, or pH. A species is known to prefer a set of specific factors in their environment that allow them to have maximum capability of reproduction and survival. Artemia franciscana are usually considered to be generalists, because they are able to live in a broad range of environments (Lab 6, Selection of Abiotic Environmental Factors in Artemia franciscana Lab Manual 2016-2017).
Therefore, the objective of this experiment is to determine if A. franciscana exhibit any preferences to certain environments …show more content…
franciscana does have preferences in habitat selection when exposed to different gradients of pH, temperature and light as the three treatments had a significant effect over the frequency distributions.
We observed similar findings when comparing our results to the ones that Curran (1980) got. They studied the effect of pH, light and temperature in the growth parameters of marine fungi from Irish coastal waters. They found out that all treatments were influential because marine fungi grew at a better rate at specific gradient of both factors.
While we consider our results to be valid, there is still room for improvement. For example, in the light treatment, the mechanism where we placed the tube could not be adjusted to eliminate room bias. Another way to increase the validity of the results would be to avoid any spills and loss of A. franciscana during the counting process. Further investigation in this subject might cover how the feeding habits of A. franciscana are affected by different abiotic and biotic factors. Another investigation in this subject might cover the influence of biotic factors in the habitat selection of A. franciscana, as we saw that predation, a biotic factor, had an effect in the light
Introduction
Habitat selection is a behavioral decision concerning abiotic (non-living) factors in an environment, such as light, temperature, or pH. A species is known to prefer a set of specific factors in their environment that allow them to have maximum capability of reproduction and survival. Artemia franciscana are usually considered to be generalists, because they are able to live in a broad range of environments (Lab 6, Selection of Abiotic Environmental Factors in Artemia franciscana Lab Manual 2016-2017).
Therefore, the objective of this experiment is to determine if A. franciscana exhibit any preferences to certain environments …show more content…
franciscana does have preferences in habitat selection when exposed to different gradients of pH, temperature and light as the three treatments had a significant effect over the frequency distributions.
We observed similar findings when comparing our results to the ones that Curran (1980) got. They studied the effect of pH, light and temperature in the growth parameters of marine fungi from Irish coastal waters. They found out that all treatments were influential because marine fungi grew at a better rate at specific gradient of both factors.
While we consider our results to be valid, there is still room for improvement. For example, in the light treatment, the mechanism where we placed the tube could not be adjusted to eliminate room bias. Another way to increase the validity of the results would be to avoid any spills and loss of A. franciscana during the counting process. Further investigation in this subject might cover how the feeding habits of A. franciscana are affected by different abiotic and biotic factors. Another investigation in this subject might cover the influence of biotic factors in the habitat selection of A. franciscana, as we saw that predation, a biotic factor, had an effect in the light