BIO 14 Lab Report

In the BIO 14 Lab, we attempted to design an experiment that would tell us something about the on the phenotypic plasticity of the stimulus-response Mimosa pudica. The specific question being asked in our experiment is: What is the effect of extreme light conditions in Mimosa plants grown in both short-day and long-day conditions on the time it takes for the plants to reopen their leaves after a heavy (1g) or a light stimulus (0.3g)? Does this behavior change when under conditions of normal long-days (14 hours light/10 hours dark) or normal short-days (10 hours light/14 hours dark) versus under conditions of extreme long-day (18 hours light/6 hours dark) or extreme short-day (6 hours light/18 hours dark)? Since phenotypic plasticity is the

The basic set-up for this experimental design consists of two sets of 6 plants (since two groups were combined in order to gather more data). Each set consists of 3 plants that were grown in long-day conditions and the 3 plants in short-day conditions. After the data from Week 1 (used as the comparison/control in this experiment) was collected, the long-day plants were put under lights that would create an extreme long-day condition, while the short-day plants were put under lights that would create an extreme short-day condition. After a week under these conditions, these plants would be removed from these conditions and an analysis of the closing and reopening times for the plants would be conducted in the same fashion the Week 1 Data was collected. In this experiment, in each set of plants, two of the extreme long-day plants and two of the extreme short-day plants would receive the light stimulus (0.3 g), while the last two plants would receive the heavy stimulus (1.0 g). After the data would be collected, graphs that display the mean and standard deviations for the four conditions (extreme long-day& heavy stimulus, extreme long-day & light stimulus, extreme short-day & heavy stimulus, and extreme short-day & light stimulus) would be generated and compared to the data collected prior these extreme daylight conditions. My expectation is that those plants that received longer daylight