Cockroaches’ Spa Day: How Humidity Levels Affect Cockroaches Respiration Rates

Abstract

How does the relative humidity (RH%) of an environment effect the carbon dioxide output of the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach? Past experiments have found conflicting results when measuring CO2 output based on the RH% of the environment. We hypothesized that the CO2 output would decrease as RH% increased due to the effects of evaporative cooling. Our group tested this hypothesis by controlling the humidity levels of a closed environment and collecting data for CO2 emissions. After analyzing the data, we concluded that our results were inconclusive, but with additional precautions taken to eliminate outside variables in future experiments, the results could fully support or deny our hypothesis.