# Conclusion (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) — Pillbug Lab

> Wilson Gramer — Period 3 Honors Biology — September 13, 2018

Pillbugs have no preference for a wet or dry environment. In this experiment, ten pillbugs were placed in a choice chamber between a wet piece of filter paper and a dry piece of filter paper. The number of pillbugs in each side was recorded every thirty seconds for ten minutes. After collecting the data, the number of pillbug occurrences in each side was totaled to a final value of 86 in the dry side and 110 in the wet side. In addition to these observed values, a Chi-Squared Test was performed on the data and yielded a Chi-Squared value of 2.94. Since the critical value for the degrees of freedom in this experiment was 3.84, and the yielded Chi-Squared value was less than this critical value, it can be determined that the data has no significance of preference.

Pillbugs naturally live in habitats that are damp and dark. However, the results of this experiment do not support this observation. A possible reason explaining the nonsignificance of the collected data is that the wet filter paper put in one side of the choice chamber was not wet enough; thus, the pillbugs detected no difference between either side and instead moved randomly about them. Another explanation could be that the time allotted for the experiment was not long enough, so the pillbugs spent most or all of the time exercising kinesis (random movement) in an effort to understand their surroundings, instead of exercising taxis (directed movement toward or away from something) in an effort to make their way over to the wet side.