House Cricket Spiritus: An examination of the metabolic rate and respiration patterns in Acheta domesticus
1. Introduction
Have you ever seen a snake laying in the road on a hot summer day in Maine and thought to yourself; what a silly place to hang out. Well there is a reason for it. Cellular respiration is the process by which living cells produce energy and metabolize it (King 2011). The formula for this interaction is C6 H12 O6 + O2 → CO2 + H2O +36 ATP (King 2011). Energy takes place in animals in one of two forms; it is either stored chemically within organic molecules or it is derived from chemical energy which in turns powers life and is given off to the surrounding environment as heat loss (Booth and Kiddell 2007). The basal metabolic rate in animals is the incidence of heat is production when the body is at a resting state (King 2011). Body temperature is a result of internal heat production, the absorption of heat and the expulsion of radiation in the form of heat (King 2011). You and I are endotherms meaning that we are biologically warm-blooded and that our body regulates our body temperature and metabolic rate by sweating to lower our internal temperature to match the environment or by shivering to increase it (King 2011). Reptiles and insects are by and large ectotherms which signifies that they are biologically cold-blooded and that they are reliant on metabolic energy to come from an outside source, i.e. heat (sun) to regulate their temperature. (King 2011). This explains why we see Mr. Snake on the warm tar on a hot day basking in the sun. He’s obtaining the energy to move.
In order to fully realize this material we conducted a simple in-lab experiment. Temperature just may be the most important stimulus on the biology of insects (Booth and Kiddell 2007). In order to further explore the relationship between temperature and metabolism we can recall the formula for cellular respiration from above to measure the amount of oxygen an...