Using Daphnia to Detect Water Safety
Due Date: Monday, the 31th of October, 2017
INTRODUCTION
Question: Can Daphnia be used to detect water pollution? How does the water type (source) affect the number of Daphnia and the accuracy and efficiency of testing water safety?
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to test different water sources for safety using the Daphnia species. This is important to the local people of Santa Barbara because it can be used to test whether the water & soil sources are safe from harmful pollution. Soil from various places in Santa Barbara will be collected and water from that soil, “run off”, will be tested against the Daphnia to see if it is toxic to them. Thus this experiment will find areas of soil in our
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When conditions become strenuous or stressful for the Daphnia to survive, death can begin to occur. Daphnia are ideal for this experiment because of their sensitivity to water quality. Units: Deaths per Water Type *Note - I will not be using this type of experimentation as is causes purposeful harm to the Daphnia, which kills more than they reproduce. This method was mainly an unproven theory that is included for informational purposes.
Water Toxicity Testing Method #2
To determine the safety, or toxicity of the water that the Daphnia are in, I have researched and found out how to find out whether the Daphnia are stressed, or if the water is bad for them. When the Daphnia get stressed due to a predator, they often die in great numbers. To prevent this from happening, I will get strained samples of the water that I am testing in order to eliminate the possibility of a larger predator that might cause false results. When the Daphnia cannot survive in the water conditions (contaminated) then the all of the Daphnia, which are female, will start producing males. Then the Daphnia after producing males, after 120 hours will start trying to reproduce sexually with the males instead of producing asexually in
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To measure the toxicity of water this way, one may use count the number of heartbeats per minute so that one can have a base reference to compare to. Once that is found, then one can take water that is from an outside source (ex: a school drinking fountain) and then move 20 of the Daphnia to that container. Then, one must wait 120 hours to see of the Daphnia heart beat aids lessened, and by how much. After that, the heartbeats found per minute can be divided into heartbeats per second and the two heartbeats from drinkable water to an unknown water source will be