Final Week in Biology

Since I am a biology major, I thought I would share some of the exciting work that I have been doing in my Animal Behavior class. Almost every biology course has a lab that goes along with it that lasts from 1-3:50 one day a week. Since I am in an Animal Behavior lab, most of the labs we completed consisted of observing animals and their behavior to find what might be influencing their behavior.

Instead of giving us a final exam, my professor chose to give us a final project. She had a choose an animal (that could easily be maintained in the lab) and we had to research that animal and devise an experiment that future labs could perform. Originally I chose to work with butterflies, but after receiving them from a distributor in Florida, they didn't live very long. After talking with my professor, she suggested that I would with wolf spiders. These spiders are known for females cannibalizing males after mating and another student in my class was observing this behavior. My professor thought it would be interesting to have me observe it from the males point of view. Other studies conducted suggest that males can sense when a female is hungry and is less likely to mate with her in order to save his own life.

I am not a huge fan of spiders (or a fan at all, to be honest) so I wasn't sure how this was going to go. Yesterday was the first day that I worked with them and it went pretty well. I don't actually have to touch the spiders and they are rather small, so that definitely helps. There was a clear difference in the males behavior when he was exposed to a hungry female and a female that had been fed. On Tuesday I will be completing some more trials and then presenting this lab to my classmates on Wednesday.

I think this was a great idea to really become engaged in the class and it is nice that there is one less final that I will have to study for! Even though I plan on going into healthcare, this was an interesting class to learn more about the behavior of animals.

-Danielle