Experimental research can be a challenging and complex process, especially when trying to isolate the effect of different variables from one another. For this reason, it’s imperative that you take every step you can to record accurate environmental parameters throughout the duration of your experiment. Environmental factors such as temperature and light can play an important role in your experimental outcomes, so it’s crucial that you keep track of these factors if you hope to obtain results that are representative of the real world, rather than being skewed by the limitations of your laboratory conditions. Here are some reasons why environmental parameters matter in research experiments...
Environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity can have an effect on research experiment results and should be recorded for the sake of science. This blog will explore the importance of environmental parameters and why they are important to record during research experiments.
Environmental parameters are any aspect of the environment that can be measured. They may include temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration, light intensity, or noise level. It is important to measure these parameters not just because they may have an effect on your experiment, but also because they provide a baseline for future research.
Case Study: The Effect of Temperature on Rodent Metabolism
The home-cage environment is a strong contributor to variability in research findings in pre-clinical animal work. For example, a study in nearly 10,000 mice reported a large difference in measured metabolic rates among the 10 different research facilities, with differences in ambient housing temperature explaining 40% of this variance, more than both the weight and sex of the mice. Intentionally varying the housing temperature between 22 and 28°C modifies not only metabolic rate, but also heart rate, blood pressure, inflammation, and food intake in mice.
These findings have led to calls for researchers to more accurately report rodent housing conditions in publications. However, researchers report very little information on housing environment, in part because they often do not have access to it. The Pallidus MR1 provides an easy way for researchers to measure environmental parameters in home cages, where their research subjects live.
