Please use this thread to discuss the roach experiment

I think that it might be a good idea to stick with the olfactory cues idea with the cockroaches but maybe do something similar to the 1983 Galef and Wigmore paper. By that I mean that we could have two scents that the cockroaches do not exhibit any difference in preference towards and expose one roach to food with one of the smells. Then we let that roach interact with a second cockroach and see if the second roach shows any preference for the scent that was fed to the first cockroach. We could also separate them physically but with a barrier that allows for smell transfer like in the Galef and Wigmore paper if we want to be sure that they are only relying on the olfactory cues. It might be interesting to test whether the roaches are able to sense that another cockroach has had a negative response to a scent (like became ill/was artificially knocked out but not killed) and were able to avoid that scent in the future. Although since we are putting two roaches together, we should probably consider only using one sex to control for possible courtship/mating pheromone interactions. 

Thanks for your posts, Carrie and Kelsey. I like these ideas. I was thinking that we would use the Galef and Wigmore 1983 paper on Information Transfer in Rats as a model for our study. Galef has done a nice series of studies in rats about information transfer and it would be interesting and important to see if these same processes occur in other animals. So, let's keep going in this direction of thought. Can you think of how exactly we would set things up in a roach experiment? Whatever you come up with, we could try out in lab on Thursday.

I think it is a good idea to use male cockroaches only but how could we determine what smells the cockroaches do not exhibit any preferences over? What could we use for our control? (Maybe water?). I think we should have one cockroach have access to food they would normally eat and then have contact with another cockroach between a barrier so, as Carrie said, we could be sure that they were using olfactory cues. Then, we should let one cockroach have access to something that would be negative for them (to an ethical extent) and do the same procedure as before for that. We should also separate the cockroaches after a specific time of interaction to 1) see if the potential learning cockroach can remember what to avoid and what to eat without the aid of the first cockroach there and 2) to control for outside variables like how one pair could communicate information faster than another pair. Also, since they are so sensitive, we should not be noticeably in sight to them during the experiment because they might not do anything with us as a distraction (we could crouch behind our lab tables and observe from there).

I agree with Ivy, I think these are ideas that are realistic and a small maze type with mesh/type of fencing to reach other cockroach seems to be obtainable plus simple to create. I agree that the olfactory cues would be the most beneficial in our creation of this experiment, maybe a type of fruit could be the test food. An acclimation period is essential, as Ivy stated, they seemed to be very sensitive to us, we could maybe discuss the possibility of recording them so we don't miss a behavior or have a live feed so there is not a lot of commotion in the single room.

Although it is impossible to completely replicate the cockroaches' natural surroundings in the lab, I think we should try our best to mimic the microhabitat conditions described in the Schal article about natural history. The closer our experimental conditions are to those that this species would experience in the wild, more accurately our results will represent the behaviors found in a true population. Since the adults and nymphs both spend their days hiding in crevices within the tree, perhaps we could add pieces of bark to the enclosures in which they acclimate. When we construct the mazes, we could place a layer of moist soil on the floor of the container and (possibly) make the barriers within the maze out of bark, in order prevent a change in surroundings from impacting the individual's food choice. Making the animals' surroundings more similar to their natural habitat will not only help us control for confounding variables, but it will hopefully also reduce their stress and thus make the study more ethically sound.

I think using vanilla and menthol scents would be beneficial, or at least use something very similar to them. I also agree with Ivy that the roaches need to be acclimated to the environment since they are so sensitive. Finally I think Linnea had a good idea about mimicking the roaches' microhabitat. In the Balderrama study they use dark cardboard to cover the floor, but we could use the "dark" soil to make their testing area more natural. I think we should also try to conduct this experiment in places with different levels of darkness to see how that affects their behavior (make their environment as dark as possible).

In the Natural History article, it describes the hierarchy present in the roaches- could we possibly study how hierarchical differences affect how quickly and therefore, boldly, the cockroaches are when approaching the food source? Also how good they are about staying away from toxic food. There have been studies on baboons that have shown that baboons higher in the hierarchy have less stress and therefore have more neurons and evidently make seemingly smarter decisions. With this in mind, I am wondering if we can find a significant difference in the reactions of the subordinate and higher ranking cockroaches.