Discover the best answers to your questions with the help of IDNLearn.com. Ask your questions and receive reliable, detailed answers from our dedicated community of experts.
While cleaning a saltwater aquarium, students placed a family of fiddler crabs from the saltwater aquarium into a container of distilled water. What effect will this have on the crabs?
The crabs are salt water organisms, so they'll have a higher concentration gradient than the distilled water. In other words, they're hypertonic to the distilled water. This will cause them to take on water and expand; their cells bursting.
Since crab are aquatic animals and thus when they are placed in freshwater, they do not get sufficient salt concentration to make themselves survive. The cells of the crab body (which was hyper tonic in salt water) will now become hypo tonic. Thus the osmo-regulation process will lower down thereby reducing the osmotic pressure as compared to the fluid outside. Also the distilled water lacks basic nutrients required for the crab and its family to survive.
Thank you for using this platform to share and learn. Keep asking and answering. We appreciate every contribution you make. Thank you for visiting IDNLearn.com. We’re here to provide accurate and reliable answers, so visit us again soon.
