We conducted an experiment testing the feeding patterns of Tetrahymena thermophila by combining Tetrahymena culture with India Ink (a food of Tetrahymena). First, we practiced observing the Tetrahymena under a microscope. We added Methyl Cellulose to slow their movements, but not kill them. With new Tetrahymena, we added India ink and after set time intervals, we added in Glutaraldehyde, which kills the cells in time so we may observe the number of vacuoles created after a certain time. We took 5 samples of cells at 0, 10, 20, 30, and 40 minutes and made a wet mount to record the number of vacuoles created. After looking at 10 cells per sample, we took the average of the numbers we collected for each time interval. The mean of the rows gave us the average number of vacuoles that were observed after the stated time. We noticed that the longer the cells had with the India Ink, the more vacuoles they made on average. I believe that the data shows that the longer the Tetrahymena are in the solution, the more vacuoles they will form. We did not see any plateau in the data, but I do think that after a certain point the number of vacuoles would not get any larger. We made a table on Excel to organize all of our data and then made calculations to get the mean and standard deviation. To calculate the mean we used the function “=average (cell range)” and highlighted the data. To calculate the standard deviation we used the function “=stdev (cell range)” and highlighted the data. A line graph was made from all of this data.
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