Assignment #2 – BIO515
Zar Chapter 6 – problems 6.2, 6.3
Zar Chapter 7 – problems 7.1, 7.2, 7.5, 7.6 (note that 7.6
is a finite population)
Additional problems
1. You have just initiated a new study on the occurrence and
distribution of deep water corals in marine waters off the
coast of North Carolina. You design an efficient
presence/absence survey using scuba and the R/V Cape Fear
as a diving platform. After completing your survey, you find
that deep water corals occurred in 13 out of 84 sites that
you sampled. Previous mapping by the US Geological
Survey during the 1970’s in continental shelf waters along
the Atlantic coast indicated that deep water corals occurred
in about 30% of the habitats that were sampled. Calculate
(and plot) the probability distribution of the occurrence of
deep water corals based on your survey. If the NC shelf is a
good representation of the US Atlantic shelf, what would you
conclude about the presence of deep water corals today?
2. The North American beaver is distributed throughout the
state of North Carolina, but occurs in low abundance.
Stumbling across a beaver pond while hiking along a stream
would be considered a rare event. State biologists have
estimated that the average number of beaver ponds per
stream/river is 0.16. What is the probability that you would
encounter even a single beaver pond during a hike along a
North Carolina mountain stream? What is the probability
that you would encounter a beaver pond if you made 10
similar hikes? Please make a plot of your probability
distribution for an appropriate range of successful outcomes.
As with previous assignments, you are free to use Excel to make
some of the calculations, but you need to turn in a written or
typed assignment showing your work (the equations you used)
for each problem, along with your plots