Effect of Temperature on CO2 Production

Abstract

When animals are exposed to temperatures that are lower or higher than their average internal temperature, their metabolic rate will adjust in order to maintain said average internal temperature as well as possible. We set out to find how this change in metabolic rate and temperature affects the CO₂ production of mice as their external environment was cooling down or warming up. This topic has been researched thoroughly in experiments previous to ours, and our results simply add on to the data and research that has been collected on the variation of metabolic rates in temperatures outside of an animal’s thermal neutral zone. We found these results by experimenting with an endothermic animal, its CO₂ production, and how it correlated with different external conditions. We hypothesize that as temperature decreases, the metabolic rate and CO₂ production of mice increases and that as temperature increases, the metabolic rate and CO₂ production of mice decreases. In our experiment a mouse was placed into a chamber that was warmed, cooled, or at room temperature, and the changes in CO₂ production and temperature were recorded every 30 seconds for a period of 5 minutes. Unfortunately, the results that we recorded were rather inconclusive due to the fact that the results did not show a solid trend in the correlation of CO₂ production, temperature change, and metabolic rate.