Team: 4

Tampakidou Maria-Ioanna, 1479

Mpelonias Fivos, 1178

Introduction

The experiment was constructed at 21/10/2016 in the lake Vrellis, which is a small, seasonal, shallow lake 12 km outside of ioannina city. The goal of this experiment is the construction of a winograsky column. Actually two winograsky columns were constructed  in order to involve two different factors whom any discrapancies could be observed.

Materials-Method

·         2 plastic bottles (1,5 L)

·         Mud sediment from the lake

·         Lake water

·         2 eggs

·         Piece of newspaper

·         Plaster

·         Plastic membrane

These columns contains muddy sediment whish was taken from the lake and was mixed with nutricius materials that are full of carbon, soulphate and protein sources. In the first case, mud has been added and mixed with two eggs (protein and soulphate source - buffer factor) and pieces of newspaper (carbon source) in a plastic bottle. In the second case, instead of eggs, has been added plaster (full of sulfur). After the bottled have been half contained with  the nutricious mud, extra mud without nutrients was added so the 2/3 of the bottles were full.  Aferwards, water from the lake was added up immediately.  Moreover, it should be indicated that the second plastic bottle has been cut and coating with plastic membrane

Muds sediment reposit.

Hypothesis

At first, the basic hypothesis is the growth of several types of microorganisms such as different kinds of bacteria and phytoplangton . We consider as a contributory factor of the microbes increasement,  the fact that the lake ranging from mesotrophic to eutrophic.  The diversity of microorganisms will be depended on the gradation of the oxygen across the bottle and the presence of soulphates. Therefore, in the top of it will be grown aerobic microorganism such us photosynthetic cyanobacteria and algae, in the middle of the bottle will be grown aerotolerant  microbes that they do not use sulful (there is not any of it in this level) such us non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria (anaerobic zone: less anaerobic to more anaerobic). At the bottom of the bottle, the presence of totally anaerobic photoautotrophic microbes propably will be observed. These microbes use sulfur ions to produce energy. Microorganisms like the phylum clorobi convert sulphates ions into hydrogen sulfide which afterwards could be used by other anoxic tolerant organisms.

There is one more conjecture in this experiment which is relevant with the difference between the nutrient conditions in the two bottles. More specific, in the first bottle the increase of various microorganisms will be bigger than the second because eggs contains a variety of nutrients  like proteins, fatty acids, minerals.

Winograsky-Column-1 which contains eggs (right) and Winograsky-column-2 which contains plaster (left).