Investigating the Effects of Aspartame, Sugar, and Stevia On Lumbriculus Variegatus Pulsation Rates

The effect of sugar on our health has become well recognized, and this is often substituted by artificial sweeteners such as aspartame or stevia (at times regarded as a more natural product). Although the effects of sugar on our bodies continue to be well researched, there aren’t as many studies testing the safety of these substitutes on our bodies. To understand this to a greater extent, California Blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) were utilized as the blackworms share certain systems with humans, including their circulatory system, which relates the Blackworm’s pulsation rates and human’s heart rate. This project used specific concentrations based on the experimental group solution type and placed 3 Blackworms, each for approximately 25 minutes, and compared each average of the pulsation rates with each other. The four groups recorded water, 3 sugar concentrations, 3 aspartame concentrations, and 3 stevia concentrations. After conducting these tests, it was found that by comparing the average pulsation rates of the baseline group to the other groups, the experimental group’s average was higher. However, statistically, there was not a significant difference in pulsation rate between all of the groups. There are many reasons why this conclusion may have been reached, one being that there weren’t enough replicates to fully test the hypothesis. Another limitation of this experiment was the higher concentrations, comparable to those consumed in the human diet, could not be tested due to its small scale. Therefore, we cannot thoroughly determine the physiological change regarding heart rates in human bodies through this.