Roly Poly Lab Report

This research lab was done in order to determine the environment roly poly’s prefer best, moist or dry. Prior to conducting the lab on how moisture affects roly poly behavior, information had been collected from multiple sources that suppose and support the conclusion. roly poly’s tend to be attracted to moist environments. From surveying other experiments and reports on roly poly behavior, a hypothesis was developed that stated roly polys will migrate to moist surroundings because it will accommodate their gills that help them breathe. Normally, roly polys can be found burrowing in places that retain moisture ( Holland, 2014), which also reinforces this hypothesis.
Materials and Methods
To begin the roly poly experiment on how moisture affects their behavior, a dissecting microscope was used first to analyze the roly poly’s and obtain physical information on them such as their outer shell and legs. Next, the roly poly’s were transferred into two chambers, wet and dry. To prepare the wet chamber, a bottle of water evenly misted a fitted piece of paper towel that was placed at the bottom of the chamber. A timer set to 10 minutes was started, and as every half a minute past, observations were recorded onto a table which included the number of roly polys in each chamber as well as other interesting or unusual behaviors. In this experiment the …show more content…
To start off, the center section in the experiment was not an intended factor, but it in fact had the highest average of roly poly activity within the 10 minutes. Figure 1 shows a steady pattern of high activity in the center section while the other wet and dry chambers struggled to hold a decent amount of roly poly’s. This might be the case because through the observations, it was gathered that the roly poly’s enjoyed the enclosed space of the center section and the fact that the center section had corners in which they were able to stack themselves