Spring Water Planarian Lab Report

Steven Ho
Biology Lab 132
Marian Wahl
4/14/15

Caffeinated Planarians vs. Spring Water Planarians
Introduction: Planarians are free-living, freshwater flatworms that are found in clean, unpolluted water. Planarians live in small, shallow, slow-moving streams under stones or leaves. Planarians cannot live in chlorinated water because it is toxic to them and can kill these animals. Planarians are also able to regenerate themselves if their bodies happens to completely tear apart. The animal adheres tightly to the substrate with its posterior end, pulls forward with its anterior end (head end), and tears itself in two. The two halves then regenerate their lost half. This process called fission, produces genetically identical individuals. The purpose of this experiment was to find out how caffeine helps planarians grow faster than spring water. The hypothesis for this experiment is planarians placed in a caffeinated solution will regenerate more than planarians placed in spring water. I tested this experiment by cutting five planarians in half and placing them in the caffeine solution and doing the same for the spring water solution. We placed them in 4 degrees Celsius temperature and waited a week to observe the results.
Abstract: The purpose of this experiment was to observe how caffeinated solutions help regenerate planarian growth faster than spring

We have found that in the caffeine solution, five grew back normally and in the spring water solution, only 2 grew regenerated. Also, we found that 5 planarians grew with odd heads in the caffeine solution and 3 grew with odd heads in the spring water solution. There were 3 dead chunks in the non-caffeinated solution and none in the caffeinated solution. Lastly, there were 10 planarians in total in the caffeine solution and only 8 in the spring water solution (We thought there might have been an error