Day 15 -- Hatchlings

There was a grand total of 1-2 living brine shrimp. I was greatly disappointed, but after thinking about it, the lack of living shrimp was probably my fault one way or another. Daniel and my data were the only ones that were inconsistent with the remainder of the class.

Nevertheless, the lab was still a success! We established that, because the shrimp only hatched in the 0.5 salinity solution, that is the ideal salt content for brine shrimp hatching. In the other groups, there was a much lower rate in the hatching of other salinity solutions. Since our data partially reflected everyone else's data, we could say, without a doubt, that we found the perfect brine shrimp conditions.

Mr. Quick explained the effect that the rainy seasons and dry seasons had on the hatching of brine shrimp. While at times the rain is heavy, the salinity of the water in the Great Salt Lake in Utah lowers. With the lower salt content comes a lack of brine shrimp, for the conditions around them are not ideal for hatching. On the other hand, other types of shrimp that prefer the lower salinity will hatch, and thrive until the dry season. When less rain falls in the summer, the water levels will go down and the salinity will rise. Between the super-high salinity and the average salinity lies the perfect conditions for the brine shrimp to hatch. They thrive until the rainy season, and the process repeats itself.

Then there was widespread reproduction. 
We placed 25 red beads and 25 green beads into a bag to represent gene selection. The red was a tiger's dominant gene for fur, and the green the recessive gene for no fur. Those with the double recessive showed the trait, and were killed off by nature. Once we discovered which lived, we placed all the remaining beads in the bag again and repeated for 10 generations. 

The first generation killed of at least 10 tigers, while the number of killed decreased steadily until there were 5 possible combinations in later generations, all that carried the trait. When some only some carry the trait, it is extremely difficult for them to die out, because the probability of selecting two green (and no red) was very low. 

Had the experiment continued indefinitely, some of the tigers would have survived, for the number of recessive genes was odd, and therefore one would carry forever without dying. 

This is a close representation of our experiment, except we used 25 red and 25 green.