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Introduction High pitch noises and loud sound deterrents have been the weapon for many super markets and militaries, both domestic and foreign, around the world. The Mosquito developed in 2005 (Campbell, 2008), is marketed as a teen deterrent. It emits a high frequency pitch that only people from age 14-25 can hear. Shopkeepers place it outside their places of business in order to discourage young teens from loitering in from of their shops.
It has become a subject of The Long Range Acoustic Device (LARD) used as a communication hailing device is now being developed to alp ship operators and navel captains as a non-lethal weapon against pirates and boarding parties. The loud and concentrated sonic weapons are pointed at the assailants in an effort to drive them away from ships. The devices are also being used domestically to disperse large unwanted crowds and riots. Carding, 2005) Our experiment is intended to use this information to see if we can impact the reproduction process of the bean beetle.
We hypothesize that sound waves will have a negative impact on the amount of eggs produced by a group of bean beetles. Materials and Methods Black eyed peas will be used as sustenance for the impregnated beetles to lay their eggs on. A small plastic container will be used to place three males and three females together. We will use six total groups. Three groups of beetles will be used as a control. They will be sat in an UN-modified habitat that will synthesize their natural habitat. The other three groups will be put in a similar habitat with an added stimulus.
The added stimulus will be a set of headphones connected to an amp playback device playing music group “The Beetles” greatest hit album. The experiment will take one week. The hypothesis for our experiment is that the vibration of the sound waves will affect the beetle’s social habits and might make them more or less reproductive. Results The amount of eggs present in each group averaged 9. 3 eggs per container in the control group. It also should be noted that of all the groups only one male survived compared to four females.
The amount of eggs present in each of the groups receiving the music stimulant averaged 7. 3 eggs per container. The amount of males alive for this entire group is three compared to two females. Control Group Variable Group Group 1 10 7 Group 2 11 Group 3 4 Average 9. 333333333 7. 333333333 SST. Dave. 2. 081665999 3. 51 1884584 3 t-Statistic 1 . 464693783 0. 221969444 There is a very weak correlation of the bean beetles receiving the sound wave stimulant and the negative effects on reproduction.
However because the high standard deviation in both the control group and the variable group we conclude there are outside factors of which we were unable to control. Such as temperature, sunlight and age of the beetles. Discussion The results we received from the experiment were inconclusive. The average amount f eggs found in both groups only have a deviation of two. Because of the size of the experiment, and the erratic, UN-patterned numbers we got from both groups it is hard to discern if the music had an effect at all on the reproduction cycle.
Also these results may be effected by more unknown factors; at the beginning of the experiment we were unable to discern the age of the beetles. The average life span of an adult bean beetles is 1-2 weeks. (Beck, 2013) This information, coupled with not being able to check on the progress of the experiment throughout the week, we are unable to issuer if the beetles were able to live out a full reproductive cycle. The results are unclear and have potential to be highly skewed.
Conclusion In conclusion we discovered that this experiment may need to be redone on a slightly larger scale were we can observe and control the effecting factors better. We would need to make sure we used younger and newly formed adult bean beetles and make sure we are able to check on progress daily. As well as making sure there are no unknown outside factors obscuring the results, such as air temperature or lighting.