The Effect Size Has On the Metabolic Rate of Respiration on Insects

Abstract

It has been observed that metabolic rates differ among organisms (French, 2017), but question is why. It has been found that there a number of factors that affect the rate of metabolism, such as body size, weight, activity, color, and wind speed. The knowledge we have attained about metabolism has told us that the inhalation of O2 and the exhalation of CO2 is a way of measuring metabolic rate. Along with this, we know that temperature has an effect on the amount of CO2 released by an organism (French, 2017). From this, we hypothesized that if we used two different insects that are very different size, cockroaches and crickets, and placed them in aligning conditions, then we will find that cockroaches release a higher amount of CO2 than crickets. Because the cockroaches are bigger in size than the cricket, therefore being able to take in more oxygen and release a higher amount of CO2. Our results showed inconsistent results, with the crickets releasing a higher amount of CO2 than the cockroaches on average.