Does a change in temperature affect the production of CO2 by respiring worms?
We examined the relationship between changing temperature and respiration rate in cold-blooded animals. Since respiration is a chemical reaction, and the rates of chemical reactions are directly influenced by temperature, we hypothesized that the rate of respiration in worms (cold-blooded) would increase linearly in relation to temperature. To test the hypothesis, we measured the change in CO2 production for worms in a chamber at three temperatures 3OC, 22OC and 35OC. We predicted that if our hypothesis was true, the CO2 production would increase linearly with temperature (i.e. the R2 will be near 1 and the relationship will be significant). We ran two trials at each temperature with new crickets. Our results showed that respiration rates at 3OC, 22OC and 35OC averaged 5.61 CO2/min/g, 6.39 CO2/min/g, and 7.84 CO2/min/g. A regression revealed an R2 of 0.85 and a significant relationship (P = 0.008). Thus our data is consistent with our hypothesis. One potential problem with our results
