The purpose of this experiment is to observe whether male crickets (Acheta domesticus)1 have a preference between carbohydrates or fat. The null hypothesis is that there is no preference between carbohydrates and fats for male crickets. The expected result is that the male crickets (Acheta domesticus) will prefer the carbohydrates. In this experiment, bananas were used to represent carbohydrates and butter was used to represent fat.
In this experiment, 20 male crickets were selected randomly. One cricket was placed in the choice chamber at a time with bananas in one chamber and butter in the other chamber. The cricket was placed in the holding chamber for 30 seconds before the gates were opened, releasing the crickets. Once the crickets moved out of the holding chamber, the cricket was recorded for a whole minute, noting the time spent in each chamber in seconds. The cricket was then removed from the choice chamber. The same amount of food was replaced (0.75 grams), and the experiment was repeated again for a
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Our statistical data recorded for the total amount of time that the 20 crickets spent on the butter side was 738 seconds and our average time was 36.9 seconds. The average time was recorded by adding all the trial times for one variable (banana or butter) and dividing by the trial number (20).
If the p-value is less than alpha (0.05), we will reject the null hypothesis that there is no preference for male crickets between carbohydrates and fats. If the p-value is more than alpha (0.05), we fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is a preference for male crickets between carbohydrates and fats. Our p-value was 0.07. Since our p-value is greater than our alpha (0.05), we fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that there is no preference for male crickets between carbohydrates and