Shrimp fishing off the coast to Georgia was closed in 2001 due to a drastic reduction in the shrimp population. Captain Forsyth, a local shrimper, suspects that increased salinity has killed the shrimp larvae. Three years of drought and greatly reduced freshwater flow from underground aquifiers resulted in increased salinity in the coastal estuaries. These habitats between open ocean and fresh water are the "nurseries" for many marine animals.
Design an experiment to determine the range the range of salt concentration that can be tolerated by shrimp larvae.
2006-09-14 16:12:54 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
It is a pretty simple experiment to design.
You should make sure you have a control experiment, that is, you have one beaker/cup/bucket with the normal sea water salinity you compare all your others to. Otherwise, if something goes wrong (the thermostat in the room goes crazy or you didn't think and sun heats up the water a lot) you won't know if it is your experimental condition or something you didn't plan which killed them off. So you should have one group of shrimp you expect would just do fine. Keep everything the same between groups except for salinity, and it should work out. Don't forget to think of some way of evaluating degrees of "badness", just saying all shrimp died won't really be enough, get something which measures how well they are doing as a group (size increase, number of live vs dead etc). I told you most, so now it's up to you to put it together in a coherent and logical way. You should write it so somebody following your instructions will do exactly the experiment you have planned.
2006-09-15 01:50:24 · answer #1 · answered by convictedidiot 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Take some water that shrimp normally lives in. Pu some shrimp (or larvae) in it. Inrease salinity by a controlled amout everyday. It is ideal if you can get it up to the level of water in question (coast or Georgia), and maybe a liitle beyond. See if how long can the shrimp survive.
Doing it this way (starting out with suitable water) really tests the effect of salinity, not the other factors.
Try to get the other parameters (temperatire, amount of sunlight ets) as close to real life in the shrimp view as possible.
Now, you know more about shrimp than I do. So yuo get to decide - do you experiment with shrimp or with shrimp larvae. The captains guess was it was srimp larvae that has problems. That was only a hypothesis.
2006-09-14 23:22:30 · answer #2 · answered by Snowflake 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
How much salinity does a shrimp normally contain in it's body? That would be the amount the shrimp can usually live within. So if the water is 1-2 salt to water than the shrimps body fluids would also contain this level? If the shrimp larvae need lesser amounts of salt this is odd as they are saltwater species, but maybe they are fresh water shrimp? Salt is very acidic and the shrimp may need more akaline areas (like coral seas) to live near to survive excess salination? i dont know exactly but this is my try at being a marine biologist! haha!
2006-09-14 23:26:23 · answer #3 · answered by jane j 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
That's the most boring question I've ever heard.
2006-09-14 23:21:09 · answer #4 · answered by tom 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋