Pieris Project
  • Home
  • About
  • Participate
  • Send
  • Research
  • Sign Up
  • Cool Stuff
  • Results

all things science =)

Observations from one of our citizen scientists ansel oommen

10/17/2014

0 Comments

 
One of our citizen scientist's Ansel Oomenn raised some cabbage whites this summer and noticed how variable the color of their chrysalis can be. Being a little inquisitive, he did a little experiment to see how the colors in the caterpillars environment might affect the color of their chrysalis. This is something called "phenotypic plasticity" (an organisms phenotype - how it looks and behaves - can be altered by its environment) and has been observed in many other butterflies. He placed different colored tissue paper (green or white) or different materials - cardboard and potted plants - at their pupation site (where they turn from a caterpillar to a chrysalis) and he found... it did influence their color!
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Authors

    many diverse authors write these articles

    Archives

    April 2017
    November 2015
    April 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • About
  • Participate
  • Send
  • Research
  • Sign Up
  • Cool Stuff
  • Results