Yesterday we moved into our new lab space to set up our ‘stress’ experiment. Our experiment is looking at the feeding behaviour of barnacles and mussels at elevated and ambient temperatures. Our ambient temperature is 22 degrees, based on the current temperature in Tjärnö Bay, and our elevated temperature will be 26 degrees, which is slightly higher than the IPCC’s predictions (International Panel for Climate Change).
The majority of the morning involved setting up and connecting to our seawater source. It was a lot of testing out different valves, hose pipes, and connections, but in the end we finally got everything connected and flowing.
Our setup currently looks like this! One large holding tank supplies six smaller tanks to make sure our barnacles and mussels have fresh flowing water.
While the initial setup was being done, Nikola and Chrissi went out to collect some specimens for our pilot studies. These early pilot studies are vital to make sure that everything in the system runs smoothly before we start any experiments.
Our pilot studies involved increasing the temperature to extreme levels of heat to see what our organisms would do. This was also in part to test the heating rod and the temperature censors to make sure that everything was working in the most efficient way possible. We played around with the setup a little bit, but ultimately decided that the heater and the temperature sensor would work best in the same tank (for now).
Both of our organisms were sitting in their tanks with an ambient temperature of around 22-23 degrees Celsius. We increased the temperature to about 29 degrees for the barnacles, and 30 for the mussels. We started noticing changes in the barnacles straight away, even with a change of only one or two degrees. They became a lot more active, and were frantically beating their cirri. The mussels on the other hand continued to feed comfortably until about 30 degrees when we noticed their slowly beginning to close.
While our pilot studies were going on, Luigi and Francine were struggling to set up our Arduino switchboard. Arduino is a single-board micro controller which will allow us to control, log and display the temperature in our large holding tanks to make sure that our organisms are being provided with both ambient and elevated temperature water.
Our day ended with a beautiful sunset, a fire emergency in the lab, and a group meeting to make sure we were all on the same page for the next day of work. It’s going to be a really interesting couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed for us and for our experiment that it all goes well!
Our setup currently looks like this! One large holding tank supplies six smaller tanks to make sure our barnacles and mussels have fresh flowing water.
While the initial setup was being done, Nikola and Chrissi went out to collect some specimens for our pilot studies. These early pilot studies are vital to make sure that everything in the system runs smoothly before we start any experiments.
Our pilot studies involved increasing the temperature to extreme levels of heat to see what our organisms would do. This was also in part to test the heating rod and the temperature censors to make sure that everything was working in the most efficient way possible. We played around with the setup a little bit, but ultimately decided that the heater and the temperature sensor would work best in the same tank (for now).
Both of our organisms were sitting in their tanks with an ambient temperature of around 22-23 degrees Celsius. We increased the temperature to about 29 degrees for the barnacles, and 30 for the mussels. We started noticing changes in the barnacles straight away, even with a change of only one or two degrees. They became a lot more active, and were frantically beating their cirri. The mussels on the other hand continued to feed comfortably until about 30 degrees when we noticed their slowly beginning to close.
While our pilot studies were going on, Luigi and Francine were struggling to set up our Arduino switchboard. Arduino is a single-board micro controller which will allow us to control, log and display the temperature in our large holding tanks to make sure that our organisms are being provided with both ambient and elevated temperature water.
Our day ended with a beautiful sunset, a fire emergency in the lab, and a group meeting to make sure we were all on the same page for the next day of work. It’s going to be a really interesting couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed for us and for our experiment that it all goes well!
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