Day or Night, Dark or Light: The effect light change has on a cricket’s respiration rate

Abstract

Since crickets are nocturnal creatures, this experiment was to see what moving them out of their naturally dark comfort zone did to their respiration rate. This was done by keeping the crickets in a dark or light environment for 12 hours before the experiment and then checking their respiration rate using a respirometer. Two respirometers were used, one that was blacked out and one that let in light. The crickets whose environment changed the most i.e. (the crickets who were adjusted to the light and went into the dark tube or the ones adjusted to the dark and placed into the light tube) took in more oxygen than the crickets that remained in the environment they had been in for the previous 12 hours. It is known fact that multiple factors can cause changes in respiration rate such as size, type of organism being tested, and how well that organism adjusts to stress. Results show that it isn’t the light or the dark that changed the cricket’s respiration rate, but the stress caused by change in environment that created the most difference.