Michael, Veronica, Chad
Overview
The reef on Tobacco Caye is covered by beautiful coral and exotic fish. One group of animals that is often overlooked by the untrained eye is worms. The Christmas Tree Worm can be found all the reef. Our group decided to study them because they are so weird and beautiful looking.
Question
Our group noticed that all the Christmas Tree Worms we saw on the reef were settled on a just a few different types of coral. We decided to investigate the question "what type of coral Christmas Tree Worms prefer?".
Hypothesis
Christmas Tree Worms prefer Brain Corals over Star and Starlet Corals(all hard corals). And the null hypothesis: they have no preference.
Materials and Procedures
1.) Pick a location with a variety of hard corals and in fairly shallow water.
2.) Lay down a ten meter transect belt was parallel to the shore.
3.) Two people look for worms and record what type of corals the worms are on that and are with in one meter of the transect. The third person made sure that the transect belt doesn't sway and they assist in counting as needed.
4.) We repeated this process six times and covered 120 meters squared.
Conclusion
We reject the null that they have no preference. The data clearly shows that the Christmas Tree Worms prefer Brain Coral. 80% of the 20 worms we found were on Brain Corals. A possible reason that they "prefer" Brain Coral is that they don't have a choice... The Christmas Tree Worm larvae probably actually land on each of the hard corals fairly evenly without preference. The polyps on Star and Starlet Corals are close together and probably leave little safe space for a baby worm. The polyps on Brain Coral are much more spread out and leave more space for the Christmas Trees to settle down without being eaten. To prove this theory we would have to dust each type of coral with Christmas Tree Worm larvae in segregated tanks.
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