Food Web and Trophic Levels
Organisms like zooxanthellae and free-floating algae that occupy the base of the reef food web by producing energy from sunlight.
What are primary producers (or autotrophs)
Human and tick
Parastism
The sampling method best suited for stationary, non-moving organisms fixed to a substrate.
What is the quadrat method?
The mutually beneficial relationship between zooxanthellae algae and coral polyps.
Mutualism
The environmental stressor causing sizable areas of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
What are warming ocean temperatures?
Organisms such as the conch mollusk and parrotfish that feed directly on algae and coral tissues.
What are primary consumers (or herbivores)
barnacle and whale
Commensalism
The sampling method best suited for mobile, free-swimming marine species like turtles, sharks, and fish.
What is the mark-recapture method?
The relationship demonstrated by a puffy white fungus feeding on the living fin tissue of a cleaner wrasse.
Parasitism
Coral bleaching primarily occurs due to a massive decline in the population of these photosynthetic organisms.
What are zooxanthellae algae?
The directional meaning represented by the arrows drawn between organisms in a reef food web diagram.
What is the flow/transfer of energy (or matter)?
Human and tapeworm
paristism
The scientific term for organisms like coral polyps that are permanently attached in one place and cannot move.
What is sessile?
he ecological interaction occurring when both a lemon shark and a barracuda chase the same juvenile parrotfish.
What is interspecific competition?
Besides providing color, zooxanthellae algae supply coral polyps with this essential life requirement.
What is energy (or glucose/nutrients)?
Two apex carnivores observed in Dive 2 actively hunting juvenile parrotfish.
What are the barracuda and lemon shark?
Sea Anenome and Clownfish
Mutualism
The primary reason using fixed quadrats to count mobile fish or turtles leads to inaccurate population data.
What is double-counting (or undercounting/organisms moving in and out of the plot)?
The interaction shown when two nurse sharks actively feed on the exact same patch of reef coral.
What is intraspecific competition?
If algae populations continue to drop, herbivorous species like parrotfish and conch mollusks will experience this immediate impact.
What is population decline (or loss of food supply)?
The loggerhead turtle acts as a secondary consumer on the reef when it preys upon this algae-grazing invertebrate.
What is the conch mollusk?
Human and E.Coli
Commensalism
Two specific mobile species identified in the dive journals that researchers would sample using mark-recapture.
What are loggerhead turtles, lemon sharks, nurse sharks, barracudas, parrotfish, or cleaner wrasses?
Cleaner wrasse fish feeding on algae covering a loggerhead turtle's shell illustrates mutualism for these two specific reasons.
What is the wrasse getting food (algae) and the turtle getting a clean shell (parasite/algae removal)?
The long-term consequence of coral bleaching on higher trophic levels like sharks, turtles, and barracudas.
What is starvation / severe population decline due to food web collapse?