Experimental Question
Does UV radiation affect the reproduction rate of a fruit fly?
Hypothesis
If UV radiation affects the reproduction rate of a fruit fly, then the fruit flies will either die or thrive.
Independent Variable
The UV radiation is the independent variable because the flies depend on it
Dependent Variable
The fruit flies are the dependent variable because they depend on the UV radiation
Materials
1. 2 small fish tanks
2. Netting on the top of them
3. Some rocks, twigs, and leaves
4. A source of food, Grapefruits are the best
5. UV lamps
6. UV sensor or gauge
7. FlyNap Kit
8. 12 Culture vials
9. 12 vial plugs
10. 12 labels
Trials
The trials will occur for each day for twenty days. I will also count the number of fruit flies for each day.
Procedure
1. Order the fruit fly kit from the internet
2. Receive the fruit flies and read the instructions to better understand them
3. Read the Culture section
4. Do all of these steps and use 4 out of the 6 vials to culture
1. Get the food
1. To make it use the provided food then add a cup of water
2. Next, you need to get the flies from the first container to the other 4
1. first you need fly nap, use that and wait 4 minutes til they are all at the bottom
2. pour them all out on the table
3. lastly, put them all into the other containers
5. Now since you have everything set up, you can start taking data
6. If the flies die, then reset the experiment
7. If you want you can use corpses or larvae in the microscopes
1. First you need tweezers
2. Pick your desired target out from the container
3. Put it on a slide and then put under the microscope
4. Then focus until you can see
5. Then take notes
8. take data for 2 weeks in blogger
9. once done with the experiment put the containers in the freezer for a predictable death
Data Table
| Days | UV2 | UV1 | REG2 | REG1 |
| 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 2 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 8 |
| 5 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 7 |
| 6 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| 7 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| 8 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 10 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 11 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 12 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 13 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 14 | 20 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 15 | 23 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 16 | 21 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 17 | 23 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| 18 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| 19 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 8 |
| 20 | 7 | 9 | 6 | 8 |
Graph
Population Growth of the Fruit Flies
Data Analysis
I started my data collection on the 15th of February. On that day all of my containers started with 5 flies in each. After the first weekend of having my experiment all of my flies died except for UV1. Once i saw the dead flies I discovered something. The food supplies in all of my containers had gone dry. So, after that incident, i started taking a pipet and pipetting water into the containers to water the food so I could keep them alive. This did kill a few but it was worth it. Ever since I started doing this no containers lost all of there flies again. By the first full week of testing all containers but UV1 had five since they all died. UV1 was very interesting because it had the most flies, it had about 20 flies by that time. Te next few days were very normal, nothing really happened until I came back from the 4 day weekend. When I came back again the food was parched so I had to pipet water into it really fast. Luckily no flies died. The next few days I used the microscope that could take pictures. It was really neat. I got some really good pictures of the flies that showed their wings. What was really cool was that I could see major differences in the wings. The UV's wings were really crooked while the REG's wings were perfectly straight. The Microscope was different then any other microscope because you could plug a cord into your computer and take pictures with it. The next couples of days after that everything went great, I was taking observations and working really hard. This all lead up to today when they all went in a freezer to die in peace.
Experimental Errors
The experimental error was quite big. While the experiment was running the flies never received water. Sure enough, all the flies in all of the containers except for UV1 died. This really upset the experiment because from then on all of my data got messed up. After that, the flies received watering in their food twice a week which seemed to work. Although, this did kill quite a few flies, it did not endanger the population of all of the flies. If the experiment avoided this experimental error the experiment would come to a conclusion but this error messed with my whole experiment. Another experimental error the experiment had was with the FlyNap™. When the experiment used FlyNap™ on the UV1 container to examine my flies under the microscope. This actually killed quite a few of the whole population. If that error had not occurred the population would have continued to grow at a steady rate.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the data was so inconclusive that I could not come to a straight conclusion. But, if this experimental error was prevented the conclusion would come out a lot differently. But, because of this error there isn't an accurate conclusion. Although, a prediction from my graphs would conclude that UV radiation does not affect the population so the data did support the hypothesis. It did support the hypothesis because the flies in UV1 thrived until the experimental error came in and wrecked the data. Global warming was the main cause for this experiment seeing as it rises the amount of UV radiation slowly and slowly. So, if global warming went to extremes, the human population would defiantly be affected but the fruit flies would be fine. The experimental errors defiantly caused major error in the data but besides that everything went smoothly.
