Now see, I’d have gone with the 3 toed Alpha test but Steve chose what he did and I’m good with that! lol

As you mentioned earlier, it’s hard to know whether it was the food source, or just that there was more moisture in mellon-fed tubs. Regardless, these worms appear to have hatched more than the ones in cardboard-only.

It’s a little tricky to do a comparison, because we don’t know whether more worms hatched or more worms survived. However, if we make some assumptions, we can run a z test of proportions.

1. These numbers reflect hatching, not death
2. The worms did not reproduce
3. The ideal number of hatchlings is 16 cocoons x 4 worms per cocoon = 64

Using the ideal number of hatchlings as the sample size (64, but it’s the same if you assume 8/cocoon), we can convert the number of worms per treatment into a percentage of the ideal (for example, RT-cardboard is 24/64 or 37.5% successful hatching at day 78 post treatment).

Comparing the percentages with a 2-tailed z test, we find that mellon increased worm hatching to a statistically significant degree in the room temperature tub (z = 3.19). Mellon had no effect in the cold-treated tub (z = 0.89). Overall, cold treatment had no effect in either the bedding-only (z = 1.42) or mellon-fed group (z = 0.55). I ran the numbers for d15 (May 2 update), and they did not differ from one another, which is not surprising given that the range of 6-9 was so tight.

As you said, we would have to repeat the experiment to know anything for sure. That said, these preliminary data indicate that adding a food source does more to increase hatching rates than brief cold exposure.