Epinephrine on the Heart Rate of Daphnia

The Daphnia is a crustacean, also knows as the ‘water flea’, widespread in lakes and ponds. The average size of a single Daphnia is three millimeters. They are directly linked to other crustaceans like crabs, shrimps, and lobsters (BioMedia, 2003).

Even though this animal is minuscule they are needed for the survival of other aquatic life. Daphnia produce little algae cells that change sun energy into food. When other animals, like trout, consume them this energy is passed on (BioMedia, 2003).

Daphnia are also ectothermic, or cold-blooded. They do not draw heat from their own metabolism, which is called homeothermic. Instead they must get it from an outside source. They regulate their body temperature by soaking up heat from the environment around it (Campbell et al, 2003).

In this experiment there are many reasons why the Daphnia is used. One reason is that they are very responsive to the variations in water. Daphnia are also very cheap to raise outside of their natural environment. Another reason that Daphnia make a great organism for the testing is that they grow and mature in a matter of days

different sets are taken, each in fifteen-second intervals, for room temperature water, zero degrees Celsius water, and forty-five degree Celsius water. Then epinephrine is added and the heart rate is taken the same way, before epinephrine, after epinephrine, and with epinephrine. All of the results for each different time are then averaged together. For a complete description of the materials and methods used see the General Biology Study Guide (Erdahl et al, 2004).

Temperature: Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average

I think that the procedure of the experiment was written well and very easy to understand and complete. I did find it difficult to cool the temperature of the Daphnia to zero degrees. Trying to balance the slide on the ice and move to where it could be viewed in the microscope was tricky, just for the fear of dropping it and loosing the Daphnia. A suggested change that I would make would be trying to cool the temperature add drops of ice water. Like it was done when raising the temperature to forty-five degrees.

Adding epinephrine to the water will increase the heart rate of the Daphnia.

EFFECT OF EPINEPHRINE ON HEART RATE

Some topics in this essay:
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