Daphnia Science Fair Projects

If you are interested in zoology or medicine, then daphnia make a great subject for zoology experiments. These little crustaceans are see through, easy to find and are easy to experiment. This is why daphnia science fair projects are so popular. When working with the following sample projects keep in mind that daphnia are living things and they are fragile, so be as humane as possible.

The first daphnia science fair projects that you can complete will look at how daphnia respond to various pH levels. The purpose of these experiments is to determine if acid rain or water contaminants will impact a daphnia's ability to survive. In these experiments the independent variable will be the pH level of the water and the dependent variable will be how the daphnia responds to the changes.

Another option that you have for interesting biology science fair projects is to see if adding caffeine to the daphnia's water will affect its heart rate. In this experiment you will need a microscope, a source of caffeine and daphnia. The independent variables in these daphnia science fair projects will be the amount of caffeine in the water and the dependent variable will be the daphnia's heart rate.

A variation on the above experiment is to add sports supplements to the daphnia's water. You can grind up and dissolve sports nutritional supplements, diet pills or vitamins and add that solution to the daphnia's water, or you can add a liquid supplement or sports drink to the daphnia's water. Chart the biological response the daphnia has. For example, does their heart rate increase, do they grow or do they die?

Genetic experiments can also be conducted using daphnia. For example, you can test the hypothesis that the antennae shape is a sex linked trait. How would you set up your experiment? If you are stumped research how sex linked traits are identified and how they are transmitted. Now, what is the best way to test this hypothesis? What is the value of knowing this type of information?

The final type of experiment that you can conduct using daphnia is an experiment that examines the reproductive rate of daphnia. There are several variations of this experiment. Your control experiment will be to determine what the natural reproductive rate for the daphnia is. Your test experiments will see if temperature, water pH and amount of light impact the reproduction rate of daphnia. What did you find out? How can your findings help scientists?