Exposing dinoflagellates to varied pH levels and CO2 Nerissa Abbott Britannia Community Secondary Floor Location : J 19 L

My project is on dinoflagellates. Dinoflagellates are single celled ocean and fresh water dwelling creatures. There outer covering is made of cellulose plates and they use flagella for transportation. They are major carbon dioxide absorbers and cause both red tides and phosphorescence.

My experiment was to expose them to carbon dioxide and varied pH levels so as to see what might happen to dinoflagellates as global warming progresses. I bubbled carbon dioxide into one of the cultures, added acid to one, added a base to another, and kept the fourth as a control. The pH level of each culture was tested both on day 0 and day 7 of the experiment.

Due to the media I used the results for the carbon dioxide culture were slightly disturbed. I had predicted that the carbon dioxide would lower the pH of that culture, this was not the case to a buffering agent in the media that I used. My results were that the carbon dioxide culture survived best because this is what the dinoflagellates use for photosynthesis. The acid culture and the basic culture almost completely died but the acid more so. The control was around in the middle of these with less of a high concentration than the carbon dioxide culture but higher than both the acidic and the basic culture.

The main conclusive evidence is that dinoflagellates do not survive well in acidic enviroments. Conclusive results can not yet be drawn from the carbon dioxide portion of the experiment due to the buffering agent in the media.