Daphnia Research Paper

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Daphnia or daphnids are commonly called water fleas because of their jerky or jumping swimming style. Daphnia is a genus of small, aquatic (mostly freshwater), generally between .2 and 5 mm in length, and characterized by a single compound eye, two double branched antennae, and generally have a translucent exterior. Daphnia is planktonic crustaceans that belong to the class of Branchiopoda, which are characterized by flattened leaf-like legs used to produce a water current for the filtering apparatus. Within the branchiopods, Daphnia belongs to the order of Cladocera, whose bodies are enclosed by a translucent shell, known as the carapace. It has a double wall, between which hemolymph flows and which is part of the body cavity. The carapace …show more content…

For humans, daphnia also makes model organisms for biological study. The translucent carapace makes them excellent subjects for the microscope as one can observe the beating heart (John Clare, …show more content…

In a closed system, blood is always contained within vessels (arteries, veins, capillaries, or the heart itself. In an open system, blood (usually called hemolymph) spends much of its time flowing freely within body cavities where it makes direct contact with all internal tissues and organs. In humans, the heart is the main pump which divided into four chambers. The top two chambers are the atriums and the bottom two chambers are the ventricles. Blood enters the heart through the superior and the inferior vena cava. These are the two largest veins in the body. Unlike humans, fishes exhibit single cycle circulation, where the oxygen deprived blood comes to the heart, from where it is pumped to the gills and then circulated to the entire body (BBC, 2014). Daphnia depends on oxygen levels in the environment, moreover, they adapt to the changing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. When there is a scarcity of oxygen, they produce hemoglobin, an oxygen transport molecule. The normal oxygen level daphnia lack hemoglobin, however, the low-oxygen level daphnia are protein rich and turn bright red which eases the effort of the hungry fish in spotting them (Bergen, 2004). This experiment is to test the effect of 10% alcohol in Daphnia’s heart rate. Daphnia, like many animals, is prone to alcohol intoxication

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