I know it's for a good cause (research and all) but I hate killing them anyway. I drown them in ethanol and the wriggle and writhe like they're in pain (they probably are, after all). Somehow working as hard as I have just to kill them in the end seems contradictory.
I am so never doing research on living things again. I'm anthropomorphosizing crustaceans, for heaven's sake! It's a good think algae don't have eyes or I'd probably feel sad for killing them, too.
On the plus side, I have data! We're still working on standards for oxygen and hydrogen, so I decided to measure my natural samples for CN. For the amount of work I put into my stable isotopes class I figured I should get at least one potentially useful data set. So, here it is:
Cool, huh?
Apparently, there's a shift in the Nitrogen isotopes of my little brine shrimp somewhere between September and October. Not sure why yet--my current theories are this could be an input of light nitrogen from someplace else making its way into the brine shrimp biomass, or it could be the physiology of the little beasties getting ready for massive cyst production (maybe?).
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