cdkelly's blog

In order for the results of this experiment to be more meaningful, a number of changes to the experiment itself would need to be reevaluated. For example, more spiders involved in the experiment would add much needed numerical significance to the data collected. Using only twelve spider across two groups was simply not enough. Also, the species of spiders was not homogenous and that definitely had an effect on the results; although all of the spiders looked similar enough and came from roughly the same environments (residential basements), their specific web making tendencies could have differed dramatically. Thus, the necessity of using the same type of spider and a larger sample are highlighted.

The findings stated above could be attributed to a number of different explanations and we will now discuss a subset of them. For the observation that the warm condition and the control condition resulted in a similar amount of web production, the increase in temperature did not seem affect the spider's ability to construct webs. Perhaps the temperature we raised the enclosures to (28.2 degree celsius) were not enough to make a meaningful impact on the amount of web produced. Another possibility is that the increase in heat actually affect the spider’s ability to produce normal web; maybe they did make a larger web but the heat caused it to comprised of thinner strands.

The data we collected partially partially coincided with our original hypothesis. We assumed that the warm condition would have a greater mass compared to the control after the experiment was completed. In addition, we believed that the cold condition would have the lowest web mass of the three conditions. We observed that there was not much of a difference between the warm and condition and the control condition in terms of web production. That being said, the cold condition did show the lowest web mass at the end of the experiment. However, we believe these findings to be incidentally biased due to the circumstances and occurrences during the course of the experiment.

After allowing four days to elapse, all the data was collected. We observed that the condition with the least amount of web mass was the cold condition. Furthermore, the warm and control conditions did not vary significantly in terms of the amount of web mass. The observation of the cold condition resulting in the lowest amount of web production had some confounding variables. Mainly, one of the spiders escaped its enclosure on the third day of the experiment. This would certainly lead to less web production because the spider was not present to produce web on the final day of the experiment. In addition, the ice replacement was relatively inconsistent due to time constraints. However, the other three spiders completed the entire experiment and the effect was still observed among those three.

It's interesting that the centrosome cycle can simultaneously occur with the other processes of replication. When I think about all of these different processes, it becomes difficult to picture all of these different proteins acting simultaneously with one another to complete massively complex procedures. Also, this is happening across millions of cells at the same time and the overall orchestration is hard to picture.

    These processes must occur in a sequential order. If they somehow began too early or in the wrong order, the consequences within the cell would be devastating. For example, if M-phase began before S-phase was complete, the resulting daughter cells would be deprived of a number of chromosomes and become destined for cell-death. Perhaps overregulation of specific cyclins could lead to something like this.

It's fascinating that the entire set of 23 chromosome pairs can be copied during S phase. Thinking about all of the components that must be produced to facilitate this replication is complicated. For instance, in order for the DNA to wrap up into chromosomes, the quaternary histone protein and all of its substituents must be synthesized and present. In addition, all of the chromosomal arrangement must be orchestrated by a large number of proteins and chemical interactions must occur. Overall, the entire process is a lot to think about.

    The interactions between CDKs and cyclins are extremely important to the cell cycle and highly organized. Since different phases of the cell cycle are dependent on the levels of cyclins, and consequently CDKs, there must be a large number of them. In addition, they must be produced at critical and specific moments throughout. The amount of involved proteins must be relatively high.

These processes must occur in a sequential order. If they somehow began too early or in the wrong order, the consequences within the cell would be devastating. For example, if M-phase began before S-phase was complete, the resulting daughter cells would be deprived of a number of chromosomes and become destined for cell-death. Perhaps overregulation of specific cyclins could lead to something like this.

Each environment chamber will consist of a styrofoam box with a lid, allowing for access to the enclosures and insulation of temperature. A thermometer will be attached to each environment chamber to monitor temperatures and ensure they are constant. The room temperature chamber will have not have any additional materials. The other two environments will have modifications that allow for the control of temperature above and below room temperature (See Figure 2). For the cool condition, an additional layer of plastic will be placed above a layer of ice. The layer of plastic will have a hole in it to allow for replenishing of ice. Melted ice will drain from a hole at the bottom of the environmental chamber into a receptacle. The ice will ensure that the chamber will maintain a cold temperature for the enclosures within to be subjected to. We will determine the ideal interval for changing the ice to ensure constant temperature prior to beginning the experimental procedure. For the warm condition temperature chamber, a heat lamp fixed above the box will maintain it at 25°C. Like the cool condition, we will determine how far to place the heat lamp from the temperature chamber for a constant temperature prior to the introduction of the enclosures.

Each environment chamber will consist of a styrofoam box with a lid allowing for access to the enclosures and insulation of temperature. A thermometer will be attached to each environment chamber to ensure constant temperature. The room temperature chamber will have not have any additional materials. The other two environments will have modifications that allow for the control of temperature above and below room temperature(See Figure 2). For the cool condition, an additional layer of plastic will be placed above a layer of ice. The layer of plastic will have a hole in it to allow for replenishing of ice. Melted ice will drain from a hole at the bottom of the environmental chamber into a receptacle. The ice will ensure that the chamber will maintain a cold temperature for the enclosures within to be subjected to. For the warm condition temperature chamber, a heat lamp fixed above the box will maintain it at 25°C.

To determine the web production in each environment, the plastic cup enclosures will be weighed again once five days elapses. The initial weight will be subtracted from the final weight, which will give us the weight of each spider web produced over the course of the experiment. The difference in weight between the temperature groups will then be compared. Finally, a statistical analysis will be run to see if there is significant correlation between temperature and spider web production.

Previous research has found that web production is greatly decreased in the cold, thus we expect the cool condition to have the lowest web mass. This research concerns the effect of temperature on web production and can be related to the global shift in temperature. Global warming is altering the climate and resulting in temperatures that would be considered abnormal in the past. As a result, the behavior and localization of organisms will change. We plan to apply this to cellar spiders to observe how global temperature change may alter their behavior, specifically web production.

Our research aims to observe the effect of temperature on the production of cellar-spider webs. We plan to include nine spiders and evenly split them across our three conditions. Each spider will be kept in an enclosure based on a design from previous research and placed into one of the conditions. The enclosures will be weighed before they are put into their respective conditions and again when five days elapse. The three temperature conditions utilized for our experiment will include a cool condition, a room temperature condition, and a warm condition. These conditions will be kept at a constant temperature with the utilization of styrofoam boxes for insulation, a heat lamp for the warm condition, and cycling of ice for the cool condition.