Lab 12: Plant and Animals Respiration
Title: Oxygen Consumption Rate among toads, mice, and rye seeds
Introduction
This experiment was designed to understand the respiration habits of both plants
and animals when exposed to different environments depending on the change in
temperature. Our experiment included a mouse—about 27grams, a toad—approximately
54 grams, and rye seeds—closed to 50 grams. We wanted to investigate each of the
different variable’s Oxygen consumption rates as the temperature either increases or
decrease in an interval ranging from an ice bath temperature to hotter temperature. The
investigations carried out in the lab required our control variables (the mouse, toad, and
rye seed) to be exposed to three different types of temperature: an ice bath temperature,
room temperature, and heated (hot) temperature for a specific period of time—a
maximum of 20 minutes.
In regards to the Rye seeds, we predicted that during the ice bath temperature
there would be a change [increase] in the O2 consumption. We predicted that as the
temperature increases, we would expect the O2 consumption rate to increase on the
interval [room, hot] from the room temperature to the hotter temperature.
With the toad, we expected an increase in the O2 consumption rate as on the
interval [room, ice]. However, for the mice, we predicted that the O2 consumption rate
would remain constant when exposed to temperatures on the interval [room, hot];
meaning there would be neither an increase or decrease in the mice’s consumption of
Oxygen on the this particular intervals.
Results
Figure 1: Graph showing O2 consumption rate between the rye seed, mice, and toad when exposed to
different types of temperature measured in ˚C.
The graph in figure 1 is an illustrated comparison between the O2 consumption
among the three variables when exposed to different temperatures. As can you see,
during the hotter temperature each of our controlled variables consumed a significantly
higher amounts of Oxygen.
The pattern observed in the Rye seeds showed no significant difference when
exposed to temperatures on the interval ranging from ice bath to room temperature. We
saw an overlap within the 95% CI’s. When these seeds were placed in hotter temperature
there was a dramatic difference in the Oxygen consumption rate i.e. there was no overlap,
whatsoever, between the ice bath and the hotter temperature nor was there an overlap on
the interval [room, hot].
During the investigation, when we compared the difference in Oxygen
consumption by the toad, we observed that there wasn’t a significant difference between
the amount of Oxygen consumed at room temperature and in the ice bath. The behavior
we observed in this experiment was that there was a dramatic difference in the hotter
temperature when we compared the rate on the interval including the [ice, room]; we saw
the same pattern as we have seen with the Rye seeds—not distinguished difference
between how much oxygen was consumed within the more cooler temperatures.
The behavior pattern observed in the mouse was the same as the patterns observed
among the rye seeds and the toad; there wasn’t a significant difference on the interval that
contained [ice, room], but we noticed was a significant difference in the Oxygen
consumption rate when the ice and room temperatures were compared to the hotter
temperature.
Figure 2: Graphing showing O2 consumption between the mice toad when exposed to temperatures
ranging from only the ice bath to the room.
In the diagram above, we have graphical interpretation from observations by
comparing the toad to the mice on the temperature interval [room, ice]. Judging from the
95% CI’s, we did not observe a significant difference in either of our variable’s Oxygen
consumption.
The graph shows that both the mouse and toad consumed significantly more
Oxygen when placed in the ice bath and a decrease of Oxygen when placed at room
temperature. Therefore, the graph provides a better analysis of the comparison we saw in
figure one—the consumption of Oxygen, when exposed to temperatures such as the ice
bath and room, had no significant difference. We hypothesized that the toad would be
higher in terms of its Oxygen consumption when compared to the mouse in the both the
ice bath and room temperatures, but according to patterns observed within the data
collected we saw that the mouse consumed higher than the toad; although there wasn’t a
significant difference in how much was consumed.
∆= Ice temperature
= Room temperature
Figure 3: Graph representing the shrew elephant analogy of how body mass is directly proportional
to consumption.
The graph is figure 3 shows the visual placement of the mouse and where if
belong on the shrew elephant spectrum. We expected it to be this way since the body
mass of mouse is in comparison to the shrew, so we expected them to be at close
proximity. Base on the oxygen consumption rate, we also expected it to be around four
because on the spectra, the after the shrew, every other organism Oxygen consumption
remain constant.
Discussion:
There are many approaches that could have been taken based on the data collected
from our experiment. As shown in the results, our toad and ryes seeds did behave
according to our predictions to some extent. We had hypothesized that the mouse’s
oxygen consumption would increase as we moved along the interval [ice bath, hot] and
that hypothesis was supported.
An important aspect of the experiment that attention needs to be paid to is the
behavior patterns observed in our toad when it was exposed to different temperatures.
The result section described the behavior of the toad in details, its activities models that
of the rye seed and the mouse, which shouldn’t have been the case. We expected our toad
to consumed less oxygen in the hotter temperatures, but as we saw in the graphs above,
they did the opposite. Since our hypothesis was not supported, we have to reject our
hypothesis.
Some ideas that we have come up with about the behavior of the toad is:
Maybe we have made a new discovery. We also hypothesized that this might be a kind of
strategy for its preparation to hibernate. Form what we knew about toads it should have
shut down its respiration activities because it was supposed to be an ectotherm. We
thought that maybe this organism was pumping air as a form of defense mechanism to
store Oxygen; meaning that the organism became inactive, but took in Oxygen to
increase it’s body size. However, the toad and the mouse performed the exact same
activities during the experiment.