Abby Trahms

3
4-23-14
PLANARIA LAB REPORT

PROBLEM: If trisected, which piece of a planarian will regenerate first?

HYPOTHESIS: If trisected, then the headpiece will regenerate first.

THEORY:
Planaria are flatworms that reproduce sexually. They also reproduce
internally and are hermaphrodites. A hermaphrodite is when an organism has male
and female gonads. When two planaria meet they exchange eggs and sperm. After
they reproduce, they both lay their eggs. This way of reproduction causes the eggs to
be genetically diverse. Being genetically diverse is when an organism has different
traits than other organisms of the same species.
When conditions are less than ideal, planaria can reproduce asexually.
There are two ways to reproduce asexually. One way is to drop their tail. When a
planaria drops its tail, the tail grows a new body and the body grows a new tail. The
second way to reproduce asexually is for the planaria to clone itself. But the clone
might not be identical to the original planaria because if the clone was raised in an
environment that has less food or stagnated water the clone could be smaller or less
healthy.
Planaria reproduce asexually by regeneration. Regeneration happens when a
tail is dropped or a limb gets severed etc. In regeneration a limb starts to make new
tissue for the wound. That tissue is called ghost tissue. They call it ghost tissue
because it is transparent. Slowly that tissue gets pigmentation. When the ghost
tissue no longer ghost tissue the planaria makes new ghost tissue until the limb is
fully-grown. I predict that the headpiece will regenerate first because the headpiece
has that brain which controls the nervous system.

CONCLUSION:
In this lab we trisected a planaria, which is a type of a flatworm. I
hypothesized that the anterior would regenerate faster. My data shows by day that
out of all the sections of planaria that were trisected, the anterior grew more ghost
tissue and regenerated. By the 9
th
day the anterior had more growth. Data shows
37% of anterior pieces in 7
th
grade regenerated faster. In conclusion, planaria will
regenerate faster when trisected by the head.
ANALYSIS:
I think my results were valid because the anterior of my planaria wasnt the
only one that regenerated faster. The part that was difficult to control was how to
cut the pieces evenly and the environment that the planaria grew in. The changes
that I could have made to make the statistics more reliable were to cut the pieces
more evenly. I thought that the anterior would regenerate faster because right when
I trisected the planaria, the anterior started moving right away and the other pieces
didnt move until later.
23
54
23
37
49
14
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Anterior Mid Section Posterior
F
i
r
s
t

R
e
g
e
n
t
e
r
a
t
i
o
n

2014 Regeneration Lab
3rd Period
7th Grade