INTERMOUNTAIN Oil Eating Microbes: Effects on Artemia and Oil Consumption in Saltwater

Overview

Oil Eating Microbes (OEMs) are a type of bacteria that consume oil for energy. They are currently being investigated for use in bioremediation as a way to clean up oil spills, which are detrimental to marine environments. In this experiment the productivity of the OEMs in saline and freshwater environments in the presence of oil is analyzed, as well as their effects on the small marine invertebrates Artemia spp. otherwise known as brine shrimp. When any new organism is introduced to an environment, the effects must be carefully observed to avoid catastrophic results. The OEMs were found to not inhibit the hatching of brine shrimp, as the hatching rates were similar in the control environment. The OEMs grew most with the addition of oil with no salt; the salt inhibited the growth of the bacteria while grown in oil. However, these both grew more bacteria than the control with just water. When the shrimp was grown with the OEMs, the number of bacterial colonies decreased, which may indicate that the brine shrimp were eating the bacteria. The shrimp did not grow in the treatment with oil and no salt, and the number of bacterial colonies was much higher. Further research should be conducted to determine the effects of OEMs on larger aquatic organisms, as well as more on research OEM productivity using crude oil.

Competition history

• JSHS 2022 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.