Water Quality B/C

[NadiaT]

Water Quality B/C: Participants will be assessed on their understanding and evaluation of marine and estuary aquatic environments.

Water Quality Wiki

Water Quality Test Exchange 2020

Past Threads: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020

Past Question Marathons: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020

[GraciousRandomness]

On the instructions, it asks for the "general ecology" of many species. What do I need to know to have the "general ecology" of a species? Location? Breeding Habits? Appearance? Any suggestions are helpful!

[scuffed]

On the instructions, it asks for the "general ecology" of many species. What do I need to know to have the "general ecology" of a species? Location? Breeding Habits? Appearance? Any suggestions are helpful!

"General Ecology" would refer to anatomy and physiology, distribution, ecological role/niche, life cycle, and feeding habits. You might also be asked about important facts associated with those organisms, such as major outbreaks of Crown of Thorns starfish happening in the Great Barrier Reef.

[NadiaT]

On the instructions, it asks for the "general ecology" of many species. What do I need to know to have the "general ecology" of a species? Location? Breeding Habits? Appearance? Any suggestions are helpful!

All of what you and scuffed listed; also any cool facts about the organism. I wouldn't worry too much about researching "general ecology" in particular; rather, just google the organism and try to learn interesting things about it. Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with other organisms and their environment, so any time you see information about how it changes its own ecosystem (sometimes with many far-reaching effects), how its own adaptations allow it to survive in its environment, and how it interacts with other animals, that's ecology! Diet and life cycle are included in these.

Make sure you are familiar with overall ecological concepts so you can apply them to specific organisms and interactions; also get things like whether it's diurnal or nocturnal, or where it lives or what its mating system is.

WQ is a really fun event, and hope you enjoy it!

[ndkuma01]

Hi, I was wondering how would you be able to derive the seasons and latitudes from looking at the cline curves. I saw in a test it showed me this image:


and asked what the season was and what latitude this graph was taken at. So their answer was summer and 60-80N. But how would you be able to derive this and how would it look in different seasons and latitudes?

[NadiaT]

Hi, I was wondering how would you be able to derive the seasons and latitudes from looking at the cline curves. I saw in a test it showed me this image:


and asked what the season was and what latitude this graph was taken at. So their answer was summer and 60-80N. But how would you be able to derive this and how would it look in different seasons and latitudes?

Thermocline is deepest in the summer because stronger winds cause more mixing, while the lower latitude you are, the more steep the thermocline is (this is because warmer temps nearer the equator cause higher surface temperature, while the temp of the water at the bottom is mostly the same everywhere.
13 degrees Celsius is pretty cold, so it must be near the poles (60-80 degrees). I don't think you can tell which hemisphere it's in, though. To get an idea of what the thermocline looks like in each season, go on google and compare the images.

Hope it helped!

EDIT: oops, I think I messed up the justification for summer. In the poles, pycnocline is mostly determined by salinity because surface water is so cold it's not much warmer than the bottom water. In summer, the surface heats up slightly, so in summer the thermocline is both deeper and crossing a greater temperature gap.

[NadiaT]

Hi All,
Why are both the nassau grouper and the grouper on the ID list? Is it wrong to identify a nassau grouper as only a "grouper", since it is a type of grouper? I know that the general grouper is only supposed to apply to species greater than 30 cm, but I've found sources that say the nassau grouper ranges from 8 to 72 cm.
Also, how can you tell a nassau grouper apart from its general grouper counterparts?
Thank you and stay safe!

[AstroClarinet]

Hi All,
Why are both the nassau grouper and the grouper on the ID list? Is it wrong to identify a nassau grouper as only a "grouper", since it is a type of grouper? I know that the general grouper is only supposed to apply to species greater than 30 cm, but I've found sources that say the nassau grouper ranges from 8 to 72 cm.
Also, how can you tell a nassau grouper apart from its general grouper counterparts?
Thank you and stay safe!

The indicator organism list was actually created in 1996 by Reef Check to evaluate the health of reefs, so I assume the Nassau grouper is considered a different organism because it has unique bioindicating characteristics from groupers in general (it's critically endangered and specific to the Atlantic; Reef Check uses a few other specific grouper species as well). When researching I think it's fine to consider the Nassau grouper and other groupers as separate organisms, as long as you keep in mind that basically everything that applies to groupers in general also applies to the Nassau grouper. The same goes for the Barramundi Cod (also a grouper) and the Bumphead parrotfish (which is indeed a parrotfish).

Reef Check (for bioindication purposes) does only count Nassau grouper individuals who are longer than 30 cm. I don't think this distinction is particularly important in a Water Quality test unless the question is specifically about the organism's use as a bioindicator.

Nassau groupers have a very distinctive look if you search up images of them (they have brown & white stripes), so if you're asked to identify one during a test, you should identify it as a Nassau grouper (identifying it as just a grouper wouldn't be "wrong," but test writers probably want you identify it at the most specific level).

[NadiaT]

Hi All,
Why are both the nassau grouper and the grouper on the ID list? Is it wrong to identify a nassau grouper as only a "grouper", since it is a type of grouper? I know that the general grouper is only supposed to apply to species greater than 30 cm, but I've found sources that say the nassau grouper ranges from 8 to 72 cm.
Also, how can you tell a nassau grouper apart from its general grouper counterparts?
Thank you and stay safe!

They're listed separately because counting the Nassau grouper in a reef check tells you something different from counting all the groupers together, so the distinction is more practical than taxonomical. AstroClarinet covered what I wanted to say on IDing Nassau as grouper in general.

The 30 cm thing is just to filter out baby groupers, as the number of adults and number of babies will tell you something different about the reef.

Nassau groupers have a very distinctive head stripe pattern. (the white stripes are vertical on the body but slanted on the head)

[T1657]

In practice tests & invitational tests there seem to be a lot of questions about organisms that are not listed on the rules (specifically coral). Is this something that will carry over to the Regionals/States/Nationals, and if so, how in depth would someone need to get?