Metabolic Rate In Manduca Sexta

Metabolism is a complex process in organisms that convert the food into energy for organism to function properly. Metabolic rate is typically defined as the amount of energy the organism is currently using to maintain the activity (Perkin, 2015). Since metabolism is a key in sustaining the organisms’ life, we decided to investigate the experiment about metabolic rate caterpillar, Manduca sexta. There are many techniques used to measuring the metabolic rate, but there are only best method that can be done in laboratory: “quantification of heat production and quantification of gas consumption” (Perkin, 2015).Our investigation is about measuring the oxygen consumption of the caterpillar in the trial duration when it was placed in sealed chamber along with chemical absorbing CO2 produced. Metabolism are mostly varies in each different organisms, therefore, a question for our investigation to what factor affect the metabolic rate in animal, especially in Manduca sexta. Our hypothesis that there are numerous possible factors including temperature, gender, age, body composition and body mass can affect the metabolic rate of an organism. As we expected, a study from the past
2. Method A. Species We used the caterpillars (Manduca sexta) for our …show more content…
However, from the graph (Fig. 1), there is no trend as to the volume of O2 consumption in 15min (mL/min) in larger organism are more than smaller ones. Based on the Regression analysis, we found no statically significant correlation between the body mouse and its metabolic rate because P value is 0.079 (>0.05). Therefore, our data does not support our hypothesis that was the body mass of Manduca sexta affects its metabolic rate the most because animals with higher mass need to burn more energy to support the extra weight and help the body keep