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Observation/Adaptation Labs

Make your own forms, etc.

• Live plankton lab. Get a field guide with a decent plankton section, copy and distribute these pages. Collect a bucket of plankton by hanging a plankton net or nylon stocking net off of a bridge into moving water. Have students concentrate plankton with a small fine mesh net before taking an eyedropper full.

• Barnacle -in-a-cup lab. Collect live barnacles from pilings, mussel shells, small rocks, etc. Put a few barnacles in a small clear plastic cup and cover with seawater. The barnacles will soon begin to feed and they are interesting to watch.. Stereo dissecting microscopes add immeasurably to this lab. If you have access to these scopes, be sure your plastic cups fit underneath the lens of the scope. For even more fun, add food coloring, carmine red dye, or finely crushed flake fish food.

• Live periwinkle lab. Collect live periwinkles from a salt marsh and observe. Stereo dissecting microscopes add immeasurably to this lab as well.

• Amphipod comparison lab (gammarid vs. haustoriid). Use deep well slides and a microscope to look at small amphipods you have collected under a microscope. Clinging gammarids (found on algae, rocks, pilings, seagrass) have hooked feet while digging haustoriids (found in sand) have wide shovel feet and hairy muscular legs. Now, why would this be? Hmmm.

• Taped clam lab. Get clean unbroken matched hard clam shells (Mercenaria), separate them, then tape them together with two wraps of thin masking tape. Each group/person tries to pull the valves apart using only their hands without cutting the tape. Most will not be able to. Students then cut the tape to separate the clam and draw/describe the teeth holding the valves together.

• Mummichog -in-a-cup lab. Seine or dipnet mummichogs from a salt marsh creek at low tide. Mummichogs will settle down in a small plastic cup for observation if not startled. Caution students to treat live fish with respect.

• Crab -in-a-cup lab. Use small, hardy mud crabs, found under rocks, in fouling communities, in shell deposits, etc. Dissecting scopes are a big plus.

• Shrimp -in-a-cup lab. Use small, hardy Palaemonetes shrimp, found in salt marshes and seagrass beds. Dissecting scopes work well.

• Marine algae lab. Unicellular algal communities scraped off of intertidal surfaces can be fascinating when placed on a slide and viewed under the microscope.

• Fouling organism lab. Fouling communities (freshwater, estuarine, and marine) are incredibly diverse and very interesting. Hang a brick attached to a rope off a pier for a month. Attach an onion sack with "chore boys" (little round plastic-mesh scrubbing sponges purchased from any grocery store) inside to the rope about 2 feet above the brick. Fouling organisms are attracted to this structure and you can easily sample these creatures. Be sure that the ‘chore boys' in the onion sack are far enough up on the rope so they don't get buried in the mud. Be sure that the ‘chore boys' are free of any cleaning chemicals.

  
  EXPERIMENTAL LABS

  Use a standard "lab write-up" format or have students pattern their reports after a journal article that you provide.

• Effects of temperature on barnacle feeding rate (See barnacle-in-a-cup lab above). Students hypothesize, design and conduct experiment, plot kick rate per minute vs. temperature at intervals from 5 to 35 degrees Celsius, write up, discuss effects of temperature on growth and survival. Materials: barnacles, thermometers, clear plastic cups, big pots of bay water at different temperatures. Extra - - have students research and discuss Q10 effects of temperature on metabolism.

• Effects of caffeine/light/vibration/food supply/etc. on barnacle feeding rate. Variations on above topic.

• Periwinkle light orientation lab (See Live periwinkle lab above). It is thought that some species of periwinkle orient their movements with light. Does the marsh periwinkle do this? Snails will crawl around out of water and may head in a certain direction. Students hypothesize, design and conduct experiment, write up, discuss advantages of light orientation to periwinkles if orientation is found to be present. Materials: periwinkles, tinfoil (snails leave slime tracks on tinfoil for later analysis), black construction paper to construct light shades, tape, flashlights (optional). Extra - - have students research other marine organisms that orient to light and discuss what advantages this gives.

• Effects of light/vibration/temperature/etc. on periwinkle activity. Students hypothesize, design and conduct experiment, write up. Students can easily measure centimeters of travel per minute as a dependent variable. Materials: periwinkles, tinfoil. Ten periwinkles are placed on a piece of tinfoil for a known period of time in each experimental regime. The snails will crawl around, leaving mucus tracks. The length of the tracks can later be measured and cm traveled per minute can be calculated.

• Periwinkle vertical position lab. Periwinkles in a tank and in nature may adjust their position to remain just above the waterline. Why might this be? One hypothesis is that they do it to avoid predation. Does adding a live blue crab to the tank affect periwinkle position? Students hypothesize, design and conduct experiment, write up.

• Anemone feeding response lab. Anemones are easily collected in fouling communities. How do anemones respond when offered materials of different sizes, textures, and tastes? Students hypothesize, design and conduct experiment, write up.

• Effects of light/temperature/food availability/etc. on Artemia growth rate. Students grow Artemia (brine shrimp a.k.a. sea monkeys, available in pet stores and through biological supply houses) in different conditions, hypothesize, design and conduct experiment, then write it up.

  
  
  MISCELLANEOUS LABS

• Blue crab dissection and feeding lab. Get a standard crab dissection lab but use cooked, seasoned blue crabs. This relates the project more to students' life experiences. Optional - - (depending on the political climate in your school/classroom) replace dissecting tools with newspaper, knives, forks, mallets and eat the specimens.

• Habitat lab report. Assign different intertidal habitats to groups of students, or have them all do one habitat. Take a field trip at low tide, have students bring two Tupperware containers each. Collect specimens in labeled Tupperware, store containers in teacher's room fridge, have students examine specimens in class the next day. Students do research and produce an illustrated report on creatures and ecology of the habitat. Examples of habitats: beneath rocks; in/under the sand; attached to intertidal pilings; attached to subsurface collection objects (like chore boys); water column plankton; fresh water stream rocks; fresh water leaf debris; stream water; lots of other places.

• Fish stomach lab. Get stomachs from large predatory fish such as summer flounder , striped bass, cobia, bluefish , cod (suggest: fishmarket, fishing friend, or go fishing yourself - stomachs can be kept frozen for a long time and gradually accumulated). Students dissect out contents and describe feeding in these species. A whole member of the fish species being dissected allows a good discussion of adaptations to feeding style. Summer flounder are voracious predators with a diverse diet and make particularly good specimens for this. Be sure to provide air freshener and dissection gloves as this can be an odiferous lab.

• Fouling organism community development lab (See Fouling organism lab above). Hang individual "chore boys" attached on a line weighted with a brick off a pier at staggered time intervals. Hang a "chore boy" for every lab group. Pull the "chore boys" up to study community succession. Students should be able to produce a detailed report with illustrations and commentary, or turn in a scientific journal-style report. Suggested times to examine community: one day, one week, one month, two months. Most practical method: sink the lines at different times over the course of two months and pull them up all at once. Most scientific method: sink all the lines at once and pull them up at different times. Alternate, easier project: study depth effects on fouling community development. Compare growth on "chore boys" hung (on the same line, all deployed at the same time) at the surface, at midwater, and just off the bottom.

• Fish market labs. Fish markets are great sources for live crabs, live clams, and dead fish. Bait stores offer frozen bait squid and live or dead fish as well as live seaworms. Opportunities abound! Try a live clam lab where students watch clams filter in food coloring, carmine red, or other marker substances. Bait squid are an inexpensive dissection with a welcome smack-of-the-sea odor that is much preferred over the stench of preservatives. Squid dissection labs can be found in many dissection manuals.

  Good Luck and Have Fun!

  Author: Giancarlo Cicchetti