BIOL3010 Symposium – Take Home Student name: Meghan Cooley
Complete this take-home exam by yourself and email your answers to khyrenba@gmail.com, by the end of 05/08/15, using (“BIOL3010 – Take Home” as the title). This assignment is worth 15 points. Please use the symposium posters from the file “BIOL3010_TakeHome_Posters” and the guidelines from the “Scientifically Speaking” handout. These are posted in the class web-site.
(NOTE: Use poster images to check out the layout and organization, not to read the content)
Part I: Answer 5 questions from those collected at symposium; provide the question and a short (<100 words) answer to each one below. (+1 point each – part of presentation score)
1. Do you think the weather had any role in your data collected on the certain day you sampled? I do think the weather had a role in our original projects data collection, although with the new project I do not think that weather affected it. We had decent visibility and coral doesn’t really change overnight so even if we went on a more clear or rougher day I don’t think we would have had any different results!
2. What other factors could have affected coral cover near the pier?
Coral cover near the pier could have also been affected by bleaching events, and disease. This area had high amounts of bleaching, although we attempted to choose transects that avoided the bleached coral, just for our projects purposes.
3. Which coral species thrive in high wave environments?
How do you know this information?
Moderate-High wave energy coral species usually develop outwards and low to the seafloor. It usually consists of abraded fossil reef surfaces with thin layers of lobata, meandrina, etc. We found some of these species in our study, although I wouldn’t really say that our study site was a “high wave environment” - but this information was also presented to us in class.
4. Did you see a difference is species composition between the two sites?
We didn’t see too much of a species difference, we might have done more transects further apart from each other next time and maybe this would have given us more diversity.
5. When was the last major disturbance at Makai Pier?
The last major disturbance at Makai was recorded in October of 2014. 95% of coral colonies exhibited signs of bleaching, and 52% showed signs of severe bleaching. (http://dlnr.hawaii.gov/reefresponse/files/2014/10/DARCoralBleachingSrvy_Results_10.28.2014.pdf)
Part II: Project Self-Evaluation (+2 points – part of take-home score):
Briefly explain what you learned as part of your project both about your particular study system (< 100 words) and about Hawaiian Natural History (< 100 words).
As part of our project, I learned that our study site (the ocean) is extremely variable. It is necessary to take many trials and a lot of different data in order to make a conclusion that has importance, and is reputable. About Hawaiian Natural History, I learned that it overlaps into many of the other classes that I am taking, and is a much bigger part of our education and life than we realize. I wish that we had more time to make more observations and to make a real experiment. I do also know that this project was difficult for me in the data analysis section because I haven’t taken any classes (besides oceanography lab which we are doing this sort of stuff just now) that require ANOVA’s or anything of that nature, so I do know other people may have had an advantage over me in that area.
