Experiment+9+-+Food+Preference

__Food Preferences __


Try to find out the preferred food of mealworms by placing different foods in each corner of a plastic box. Place eight to ten mealworms in the box and record how many worms are in each food/ the appearance of the food. **//Hypothesis://** Mealworms prefer fruit that have a high water content.

**//Prediction://** When given cantaloupe, apple, dragon fruit and mango, the mealworms will prefer the dragon fruit due to the fact that it is has a high water content.

**//Materials://** Mango, apple, dragon fruit, cantaloupe, box

**//Procedure://** We performed this experiment on three meal worms, as one of the mealworms was in the pupa stage at this time. We placed a piece of mango, apple, cantaloupe, and dragon fruit in the box. Each piece of fruit was placed in a different corner of the box. We then placed all of the mealworms in the center of the box. We left the mealworms in the box overnight to allow time for them to consume the fruit.

**//Controlled variables://** Temperature, time (one day), location (box)

**//Responding Variables://** Behaviour of the mealworms (tendency to eat a certain fruit)

**//Manipulated variable://** 4 different fruits (mango, cantaloupe, apple, dragon fruit)

**//Observations://** We left the mealworms in the box with the 4 different types of fruit overnight. When we observed the fruit the next day, we noted that the dragon fruit appeared to be more dried out in comparison to the cantaloupe, apple and mango.

**//Conclusion/comments://** We believe that our observations are based on the fact that dragon fruit is rich in water. Mealworms absorb moisture; therefore, we feel that they may have preferred this fruit. We do not feel that the results are conclusive, as we were unable to observe the mealworms for the entire day. Other factors may have influenced the condition of the fruit. []