A_Comparison_of_Gill_Tissue_to_Body_Tissue_for

A Comparison of Gill Tissue to Body Tissue for Deep-Sea and Shallow-Water Mussel Introduction Our topic is to see if there is a difference of the amount of gill tissue between shallow-water mussels and deep-sea mussels. For shallow-water mussels, their scientific name is Mytilus edulis. The deep-sea mussel’s scientific name is Bathymodiolus thermophilus. Shallow-water mussels eat by filter feeding. They suck in water and little plankton gets caught in the cilia on the gill tissue and the mussel starts eating. Also, when the tide goes out, they close their shell with water inside. For the deep-sea mussel, they are way down in the water where hydrothermal vents are. There is no light so plankton can’t survive. So, they use chemosynthesis. My testable research question is “Is there a difference between the amount of gill tissue in shallow water or deep-sea mussels.” My alternative hypothesis is that the shallow-water mussel will have more gill tissue than deep-sea mussel. My null hypothesis is that the shallow-water mussel will not have more gill tissue than the deep-sea mussel. Materials and Methods The items we used were 2 tweezers, lab scissors, calipers, and graduated cylinders. First, you have to measure the length of the mussel with the calipers. After, we put some water in the cylinders. Then, we opened the mussel with the lab scissor. We stabbed the opening of the mussel shell with the lab scissor and gently push the scissor down, and open the mussel with the pincher. After you opened the mussel, you find a bright brown gill tissue. Then, you gently lift it with your pincher and cut it off with the lab scissor. You do that on both sides and put it in the graduated cylinder. Then, you scrape everything off until it’s clean. When you’re done scraping, you put all the tissue in the other cylinder. We do this so we could get the volume of the gill tissue. We got our shallow water mussel by hand in the cabriole beach, but for the deep sea mussel, the scientists got them while launching Alvin during every dive. We jot down the shell length, starting volume of water, volume of water with gill tissue, volume of gill tissue, starting volume of water, volume of water with body tissue, and volume of body tissue. Then we calculate. When we had to pick our mussel for the graph, we rolled a dice to randomly choose. We got our ratio of gill tissue to body tissue, data range, and the frequency. Data range is the lowest number going numerically to the highest number. The frequency is the number of times observed. Then we need to graph our chart. When you graph, the shape of the result will look like a hill. The graph title was the frequency of gill tissue to body tissue for deep sea and shallow water mussel. Writing Results The major patters are the normal distribution; it is shaped like a bell. The range of the bell shape goes from 0.17 to 0.41. My results in my graph look about the same. The average results tell us the average. In my data, I did not have a huge outlier but 0.17 to 0.26. We did a T-Test on our data and calculated a P-Value of 0.001. Our P- Value means that there is only a 0.1% chance of getting these data if our null hypothesis is true. We reject the null hypothesis. We conclude that our null hypothesis is probably false and that there is a difference between the proportion of gill tissue to body tissue in shallow-water and deep-sea mussels. Discussion Paragraph Our research showed us that there is difference of gill tissue to body tissue for shallow-water and deep-sea mussels. It showed that deep-sea mussels have more gill tissue than shallow-water mussels. The results do support our alternative hypothesis. I think there is a difference because of the environment they live in. The environment changes everything because of the food they eat and the climate they live in. My results don’t really make sense. I thought that the shallow-water mussel should have more gill tissue because they use more gill tissue than deep-sea mussels. The methods I used maybe could have biased my results because I didn’t scrape the shell all the way, I didn’t have enough time to finish, or I could have got some gill tissue inside the body tissue container. If I was to do this again, I would work slow and carefully so I wouldn’t make a a mistake like not scraping the shell, or not cutting all the gill tissue. Still, I will check if I have plenty of time to finish all the dissection.