ideas for cricket experiment...yuck - (Jun/25/2007 )
First of, hi. 
well, as my summer project for a.p. biology next year, we were told to raise crickets, breed them, and observe their behaviors or whatnot. Then, we were told to design some kind of experiment involving the crickets, and have a formal lab written about the experiment.
Some of the possible topics we can use were:
-chirping rate
-differences between pet store crickets and wild crickets
-jumping distances
so, is anyone willing to share any ideas for the experiment? I'm already having a difficult time finding out how to raise them and cope with them..ew (squirming as I type!)
thank you!~
well, as my summer project for a.p. biology next year, we were told to raise crickets, breed them, and observe their behaviors or whatnot. Then, we were told to design some kind of experiment involving the crickets, and have a formal lab written about the experiment.
Some of the possible topics we can use were:
-chirping rate
-differences between pet store crickets and wild crickets
-jumping distances
so, is anyone willing to share any ideas for the experiment? I'm already having a difficult time finding out how to raise them and cope with them..ew (squirming as I type!)
thank you!~
There are many conditions you could test here.. first, I like the chirping rate as you just listen and count whereas the jumping distances means you have to handle them and this is clearly not a good option for you. I would look at differences between pet store crickets and wild crickets when kept under various conditions such as the amount of light they receive each day, different diets (I'll admit I'm not even sure of what they eat) or what temperature they are kept at (heating pad versus basement?). I had a similar experiment once with plants and my cats got to the plants (still not sure how they managed that one) and ate them. I wound-up writing up an experiment of plants versus cats with the cats clearly having the biological advantage. I got an A simply for my creativity in the report...maybe you have a cat that likes to eat crickets? Hope this helped a bit.
^ awww... hahah well, thanks for the ideas, but if I were to set up the lab on chirping rates and jumping distances, what would be the control, as in what variables would I be comparing?
hi
how about chirping differences during different times in the day - do they have a particular morning or evening chirp, different frequencies, loudness etc - if you have a computer and a microphone i'm sure there would be some freeware out there that would turn the noise into a graph to allow easy comparison (ok you obviously have a computer - you know what i mean)
dom
nope, just a plain audio recorder...
You have your control group i.e. from normal rearing (in terms of feeding, temperature, light, etc) and experimental groups were one parameter is changed e.g., rearing temperature. Then you measure you experimental variable e.g., developmental time. Often pet store animals have some inbreeding problems, you can check for example parameters like survival or longevity, fecundity, body-size, dispersal behaviour, as reaction to changed/harsher conditions e.g., lower temperatures, nutritional imbalances, overcrowding, different photoperiods, in comparison to wild crickets. The latter should perform other then the pet shop ones (possibly reduced fecundity, lower/no adaptations to harsh conditions, reduced survival etc, or vice versa in crowded conditions).
But you need some equipment e.g. room with constant temperatures, adjustable light-regime etc.
Dispersal you can check if you throw them (slightly) upwards (similar as "serving" in volleyball), I saw this as experimental design in field crickets, that have different dispersal types as - depending on season - some fly, some not. However, these field crickets start to fly when thrown in this way in the air (if they want to).
Hope this helps.