The Effect of the Amount of Steel Cut Oats Given to Galleria mellonella on the Degradation Rate of Microplastics
School Name
Spring Valley High School
Grade Level
10th Grade
Presentation Topic
Environmental Science
Presentation Type
Non-Mentored
Abstract
Microplastics have many harmful properties that can severely damage terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. While there are methods of getting rid of microplastics in these ecosystems, they have many flaws. Most of these methods are not able to collect microplastics because of their miniscule size. However, wax worms have been found to be able to not only eat microplastics but also degrade them using bacteria known as Plodia interpunctella which is located inside of their gut. The purpose of this experiment was to find out how much of a microplastic a wax worm will degrade based on the amount of oats it receives. It was hypothesized that the wax worms that were fed 100g of oats would eat and degrade the most microplastics because they had received the most amount of oats. In this experiment, there were five variations of independent variables. Wax worms that were fed 0g of oats, 25g of oats, 50g of oats, 75g of oats, and 100g of oats. The descriptive statistics of these treatments can be seen in Table 5. An ANOVA test was run and calculated an F value of .15 and a critical value of 2.37. These findings gave insufficient data to reject the null hypothesis.
Recommended Citation
Gottipaty, Vijay, "The Effect of the Amount of Steel Cut Oats Given to Galleria mellonella on the Degradation Rate of Microplastics" (2020). South Carolina Junior Academy of Science. 128.
https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/scjas/2020/all/128
Location
Furman Hall 229
Start Date
3-28-2020 10:15 AM
Presentation Format
Oral and Written
Group Project
No
The Effect of the Amount of Steel Cut Oats Given to Galleria mellonella on the Degradation Rate of Microplastics
Furman Hall 229
Microplastics have many harmful properties that can severely damage terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. While there are methods of getting rid of microplastics in these ecosystems, they have many flaws. Most of these methods are not able to collect microplastics because of their miniscule size. However, wax worms have been found to be able to not only eat microplastics but also degrade them using bacteria known as Plodia interpunctella which is located inside of their gut. The purpose of this experiment was to find out how much of a microplastic a wax worm will degrade based on the amount of oats it receives. It was hypothesized that the wax worms that were fed 100g of oats would eat and degrade the most microplastics because they had received the most amount of oats. In this experiment, there were five variations of independent variables. Wax worms that were fed 0g of oats, 25g of oats, 50g of oats, 75g of oats, and 100g of oats. The descriptive statistics of these treatments can be seen in Table 5. An ANOVA test was run and calculated an F value of .15 and a critical value of 2.37. These findings gave insufficient data to reject the null hypothesis.
