Ok, heres the story. I am doing a group project in biology, studying pill bugs, sow bugs but it you don't really have to know what bug it is to answer my question. Ok, we would be studying which foods these bugs would prefer. There scavengers so they eat a large variety of foods. Now the lab would include giving these bugs a choice of what to eat in a choice box. Now this "smart" group decides, lets see if they like dead plants and live plants. I am in awe how somebody can really think a pill bug, a scavenger, can tell the difference. They also thought, oh what if we put peroni in it. You can see what pain I'm in. Now there not doing the peroni thing but they are doing one thing that makes me go absolutely insane. They want to make the control for the data, get this, pill bug food. Ok so lets review what we have again, we are comparing which of the following foods that a pill bug prefers: 1. A live plant: Fair enough, but its sort of stupid that their defrenciating live from dead. 2. A dead plant: Ok, um these bugs are scavengers, do you really think that they are going to tell the difference between the fact that its alive or not. The amount of glucose might be slightly more but it really doesn't make that much of a difference. Well, from my opinion. 3. Peperoni: ok maybe not but i just wanted you to see the intellegence of one of these group members. 4. Some sort of meat: Ok, another thing that bothered me, they were going to take some turkey, leave it outside over the weak end, and then use it. Wow, don't even get me started. 5. Pill bug food: Yah makes alot of sense (not), why don't we give them a food that scientists have researched to be their perfect diet. Then we could put it into our lab to make sure they stay their and eat it and corrupt our data. But to make this the control, it makes me wonder how many people get into honors biology. THE CONTROL SHOULD BE NO FOOD AND IN THE CENTER OF THE CHOICE BOX. The reason i say it should be in the center was because they were planning to put it in the bottom right corner. Now, you can see, that this is making me go absolutely insane. First of all, why does this have to happen to me? What did a nice smart kid do to anybody to make him suffer like this? Now I would like lots of replies saying that you agree with me and why you do and maybe your position in school or if you are some sort of scientist. PLEASE ADDRESS THE FACT THAT THEY WANT TO USE FOOD AS A CONTROL!!!!!! NO FOOD SHOULD BE THE CONTROL thanks for holding up and reading this __________________
You’ve got me there! I would have used their normal food as a control. I know nothing about pill bugs, so I’m going to use the example of dogs instead. If you wanted to test what type of food dogs like, you’d use a wide selection, different colours, tastes and smells. But you couldn’t use no food as a control, you’d use what food they had been used to and rate them on preference, ‘they like this more than this’. –dog food is manufactured to be balanced with minerals and vitamins, yet when I give my dog a choice she goes for real meat, and sometimes fruit. Equally you wouldn’t test all four types of food at the same time. But by the sounds of it the most important thing is to have testable hypothesis, and once yous have gathered the data to be able to reformulate the hypothesis. By the sound of it your hypothesis is that the bugs will prefer the pill bug food, which your group members don’t agree with? (as your request I did honors biology, undergrad biotechnology, and I’m not a scientist any more)
I only have a minor in Biology, but all the same... In a controlled experiment the environment should be tested independent of the food to ensure that other aspects of the environment aren't confounding the experiment. Say, for instance, one side of the box was darker than the other. This might make the bugs run preferentially to that side for the protective shadow. This is an effect we can see. Say, instead, that a nearby machine (like a fishtank aerator or something) was producing a vibration that pillbugs don't like. This might make them run preferentially to the most distant side of the box from the aerator. To control for environmental factors you need to perform trials without food first in order to determine whether the bugs just run around randomly, or whether they tend to do the same thing each time. After this is done, experiments can be performed to determine whether pillbugs run toward the food in the first place, since you don't really know. If a plant you harvested was sprayed with some kind of irritant then the bugs might run AWAY from it. BUT this is not so important, since you're only judging the difference in preference. Ahem. So theoretically a properly controlled experiment would have a series of initial trials with the apparatus to determine whether any confounding factors were already present before food trials began. As for the other stuff, I think that if you leave turkey outside for a week it will attract raccoons.
