Why Do Sow Bugs Prefer

The question investigated in this experiment was how does the sow bug’s preference of habitat affect the concentration and distribution of the organisms. The purpose of this investigation was to decipher what habitats these organisms prefer to live in and how it would affect their population density. This was tested by a simple experimental design with four petri dishes that each represented a different environment. The control treatment was the dish with just dirt while the other habitats included rocks, wood, then dead leaves. All the sow bugs started out in the control treatment and was monitored meticulously for thirty mins. The major result from this study was that these bugs have no preference of habitat. Trends in the data revealed that the bugs typically spent the most time in the leaf and controlled dish. Thus, this overall investigation was to see the preferences of habitat and how these choices affected their distribution.

Introduction

Oniscus aselus are a species of crustaceans that are found in …show more content…
The data collected in this investigation was mostly quantitative that included recorded numbers of the amount of bugs in each dish over the thirty minutes with five minute increments. The trend of movement of the sow bugs were mostly concentrated in the leaf dish and the controlled dish. The lower concentrations of the sow bugs were found in the rock and wood habitats. Another trend is that the rock dish had the most stabilizing population, whereas other dishes had influxes before stabilizing like with the leaf dish as shown in figure 1. The dish that received the most bugs over the experimental time were the leaf and dirt dish with an average of 2.5 whereas the other dishes had an average of one as shown in figure 2. Furthermore based off the chi square test it deprived a chi square value of 2.5 and is less than