Pillbug Lab Report

Abstract: The main focus of this lab is on animal behaviors in terrestial isopods, also known as pillbugs. There are many purposes to this lab experiment. First, these pillbugs are put into four different types of enviroments, also known as chambers, light v. dark, hot vs. cold, moisture vs. dry, and lastly shelter vs. open. In these different chambers, there are 10 pillbugs, 5 placed into each individual chamber and then observed for up to 5 – 10 minutes. In this lab we observed that pillbugs prefer light areas, hot temperatures, moist environments, and lastly sheltered spaces. In this experiement, there were two behaviors kinesis, and taxis, our pillbugs showed taxis behavior in all four types of environments.

Introduction: Ethology is the

Terrestrial isopods, commonly known as sowbugs, and pillbugs, given the nickname, roly-polies. Pillbugs develop this name because they have atendency to roll up when they feel like they have been threatened, on the other hand sowbugs do not show this behavior. Pillbugs belong to the members of Phylum Arthropoda and to the class of Crustacea. They share the class of Crustacea with many other unique animals such as the crayfish, lobster, shrimps, crayfish, and barnacles. Pillbugs have a hard segmented exoskeleton, 2 antennas, 2 compound eyes, and seven pairs of

In figure 1.1 we can see the reusults for only the pillbugs in the light, hot, shelter, and moist chambers since the results showed these were their greater likings. In figure 1.2 we can see the light (COLOR), hot (), shelter (), and moist () results to see how many left that spot, came back and then stayed until the amounted time was up. Pillbugs seemed to be more attracted to the light and had an average number of 6 isopods, over 4 in the dark chamber. We see in figure 1.2 that pillbugs had a greater average in the hot, sheleter and moist chambers, with averages of 7 and