Trials

This semester, me and my partner got to further our trials and research of the declining conspecific attraction between Caribbean Spiny lobsters. We ran a series of trials giving two lobsters at a time a choice to either share a shelter or not. We came in the next morning to record their positions. We also utilized GoPros to record their nocturnal movements and whether or not they interacted with each other. This part of the experiment was aiming to look at how their original environmental factors, presence of shelter and prevalence of disease, affected their behaviors in a controlled setting. Our last facet of the experiment was to draw a blood sample from each lobster to genotype for the presence of PA-V1. The results we have analyzed so far are unexpected and do not follow along with our original hypothesis. We are very eager to continue analyzing our results, videos, blood samples and to begin thinking of new directions for next semester that could answer some of our remaining questions.