Essay Example: Materials and Methods

The primary objective of the study was to examine whether there is a relationship between diet and heart rate and possibly establish a model to explain the same. As used in this context, diet, also referred to as the metabolic rate is the rate at which the body burns calories to provide sufficient energy that the body needs to sustain life. A higher metabolic rate has been proved to lead to faster burning of calories leading to availability to more energy and weight reduction, depending on lifestyle and dietary factors (Hill, 2015, p. 20). Although there is an unclear connection between metabolic rate and heart rate, both depend on the rate of oxygen consumption, pointing out that the activities in one functionality might predict the activities of the other. To set off the study, a null hypothesis that metabolic rate (or diet in watts) does not significantly predict heart rate per minute was adopted.

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To prove this hypothesis, secondary data on the biological attributes of various animals were collected and analyzed. Each animal species have unique biological characteristics, including food requirements, weight, basal metabolic rates, heart rates, respiratory rates, and lifespan. Each of these factors has varying impacts on the life of animals. Basing on this argument, data presented in Table 1 were carefully retrieved from scientific sources. Averages were calculated in cases where data were provided in the form of range. The goal of the data collection process was to retrieve data for adult animals. Once collected, data was then analyzed using Ms. Excel as provided in the attached excel file. The following results were evident.

Table SEQ Table \* ARABIC 1.Biological Characteristics of Animals

Results and Analysis

Descriptive Statistics

From Table 1, only the diet and the heart rate columns were of interest for this study. All the data under the two columns were used for analysis.

From the analysis, it is evident that mice had the highest heart rate (640beats per minute) yet with the lowest metabolic rate (1.45Watts). The same trend is also seen in a 1.75 kg hen with an average of 300 heartbeats per minute yet with 4.8 watts metabolic rate. A 3-ton elephant has a metabolic rate of 1226 watts and a heart rate of 36 bits per minute. Aquatic animals, including blue whale and crocodile, exhibited quite a peculiar trend. With 4500 watts of metabolic rate, a 70-ton blue whale has an average of 8 beats per minute. For a 200kg crocodile, the rates are 400 watts and nine heartbeats per minute, respectively. From the analysis, it is fair to say that large animals have a high metabolic rate and low heart rate. So far, this predicts that metabolic rate and heart rate are negatively correlated.

Inferential Statistics

A linear regression analysis done at a significance level of 95% revealed that about 11.58% of heart rate could be predicted from the metabolic rate. The prediction rate is to low to justify a correlation. This is proved by the high p-value (0.3057), which leads to the failure to reject the null hypothesis that metabolic rate does not significantly predict heart rate (p>0.05). Despite the irrefutable output, graphical results, as a fitting parameter, still indicate that there might be a negative correlation between the two, even if the correlations are insignificant. Figure 1 shows the graphical result of the heart rate as predicted by diet.

The trend-line is downsloping, indicating the negative correlation. The trend-line has a slope of -0.0486. Using this slope and assuming that the metabolic rate is represented by x and heart rate by y, the following simple linear model can be established.

Y = -0.0486x.

Discussion

The goal of the study was to establish whether the metabolic rate of an animal can predict its heart rate. Although the results confirm that its metabolic rate cannot significantly predict an animal's heart rate, probabilities are that there might still be some level of correlation between the two. A graphical connotation of the relationship indicates that the metabolic rate can predict heart rate but negatively and insignificantly. The model suggests that the heart rate can be accurately be predicted by only 4.86% metabolic rate.

Bibliography

Armstrong, J., 1998. Relationships between heart rate and metabolic rate of pike: integration of existing data. Journal of Fish Biology, 52(2), pp.362-368.

Hill, L., Hu, D., Koenig, J., Sollers, J., Kapuku, G., Wang, X., Snieder, H., and Thayer, J., 2015. Ethnic Differences in Resting Heart Rate Variability. Psychosomatic Medicine, 77(1), pp.16-25.