Salinity Changes :: science

Salinity ChangesI chose to experiment with the effects of salinity changes on the polychaete, Nereis succinea. Along with the other members of the group, patty and Jeremy, I was curious to see whether the worms would engage in adaptive demeanour when placed in a tank of water of foreign salinity, or whether they would simply continue changing osmotically until they reached equilibrium with the environment. The first beat in our experiment was to simply observe the worms and get a odour for the ways in which they act. We did this on Wednesday, May 7, 1997 from 930am to 1030am. in any case on this day we learned how to mix and measure salinity, practiced measure the worms, and deciding our exact schedule as far as when we would fuck in and for how long, etc. From what I observed, the polychaete is a salt-water worm that has fitting to live in estuaries. We kept the control tank at 20 parts per thousand to 24 parts per thousand, and the worms seemed very content and flushed at that level. The worms on which we experimented ranged in size from some four inches to approximately six inches. They weighed from 1.8 grams to 4.6 grams at the beginning of the experiment. They have a pinkish, almost chromatic color to them, and on two opposite sides, they have these crimson hairs line up in a row, stretching the entire length of their bodies (the hairs be less than an eighth of an inch long). If we were to call the two lines of hair eastside and west, then on the north and south sides, there were phantasm lines that also stretched the entire length of their bodies. These were their primary blood vessels, and though we essay to locate the pulse that is supposed to conspicuously travel up and overpower this vessel, we were non able to locate it, except once on angiotensin-converting enzyme worm for less than 30 seconds. Also I often was not able to tell the difference between the head and the tail. Their actions were very basic. They seemed to like to sta y still for the most part, hiding underneath the little snack of seaweed we put in the tank. We also put a glass underground at the bottom of the tank, thinking that they might try to crawl in there for safety, but we never saw them in there.