Ecology Lab: An Experiment Demonstrating Effects of Fly Repellents on Infectious Insects on Human
Ecology Lab Report
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Lab Report
Title:
An Experiment Demonstrating Effects of Fly Repellents on Infectious Insects on Human
Statement of the Problem
Vector borne diseases caused by infectious insects are no longer a cause of alarm but rather, a cause of concern globally. Researches indicate that, infectious insects accounts to more than 18% of vector borne diseases, causing more than one million deaths every year in the world. Some insects are infectious especially when they happen to interact with the human beings (Pope, 2014). For instance, A Fly is a notorious example known for contaminating the human foodstuff when it lands on it.
Flies can infect human with diseases like typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and sometimes it can transmit tuberculosis (Khalil, 1994). Since houseflies do not bite to pass pathogens into the human body, the diseases’ causing agent is present on its mouthparts and defecates like vomitus and feces. For prevention mechanism, people seems to doubt efficiency of fly repellents (Pope, 2014). Many have suggested that flies are now biologically resistant to many commercial fly repellents. This prompted us to conduct an experiment to validate these contentions.
Overall, Experiment Questions
- Does the density of flies’ accumulation affect diseases transmission?
- Are there any preventive mechanisms that could prevent flies from contaminating human food?
- Do commercial fly repellents work well to prevent flies from spreading diseases?
Hypothesis:
H1: Flies are incline to rest and defecate more on notecards untreated with fly repellents than on notecards treated with fly repellents.
H2: Flies are incline to rest and defecate on a notecard equally, irrespective of whether it has been treated with fly repellents or not.
Materials:
The experiment will need four slides of notecards, two cages covered with mosquito nets, a strong commercial fly repellent, and a collection of healthy flies.
The flies were gathered using a fly traps.
Procedure:
In the laboratory, one of the cage (labeled C1) was filled with large number of flies. We took two slides of notecards, one sprayed with repellent while the other remained untreated. The untreated slide is for the control group.
The other cage (labelled C2) was filled with fewer flies, we also put two notecards, one treated with the repellent, and the other one remained untreated. The set-up of the experiment stayed in the laboratory for one week.
The purpose of the mosquito net was to ensure that flies were enclosed in the cage throughout the entire period of the experiment. The notecards offered a surfaced where the flies could land and rest. Researches have it that, whenever a fly stops to rest, often, they either vomit or execrate feces on surfaces. Basing on this knowledge, using the notecards enabled easy counting of defecates from flies and allowed easy comparisons under different conditions.
Results:
Observation:
After one week, in cage C1, the untreated notecard had been smeared with 16 fly spots while the treated notecard recorded 2 spots only. On the other hand, in cage C2, the untreated notecard still recorded more number of spots than the treated notecard. However, the spots were fewer compared with the recordings in cage C1.
The two cages had different results due to different in density concentration of flies per location. Cage C1 had many flies and recorded many spots on untreated slides, whereas cage C2 had fewer population of flies hence recording fewer spots on untreated spot too (Khalil, 1994).
NOTE: The number of spots suggested the number of times a fly landed on the notecard.
Inferences
In cage C1, the untreated slides recorded many fly spots because the flies will incline to rest on slide not sprayed with repellent (Khalil, 1994). Flies find it comfortable to land on this slide more than once. On the contrary, the treated notecard recorded few sports because they tend to avoid the notecard with fly repellent. From the results, it implies that; fly repellents works effectively enough to repel flies away.