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.
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