Spinach Is Good, but Olive Oil Is Not

Abstract

In this experiment, we wanted to determine the outcome of placing Trichoplusia ni on a specific diet for ten days. The purpose of the experiment was to compare growth rate of caterpillars reared on a lipid supplemented diet to others reared on a non-supplemented control diet. We hypothesized that the supplemented diet caterpillars would grow larger and faster than the non-supplemented control diet. The biomolecule supplement used in our experiment was olive oil and a soy-wheat germ premixed artificial diet was used for our control. The caterpillars were weighed for their mass and then placed in containers filled with the specific diet they were to consume. We recorded their mass again after five days and were going to record again at ten days, but nine of the ten died when pupating. We were unable to form a concrete conclusion because of the high pupae mortality rate. We concluded that the high pupae mortality rate was due to the interference of the lipids with the juvenile hormone.