Reading+1

** Great Job 7pts ** Reading log 1 - Using Mathematical Models to Study the Dispersion of Exotic Marine Species

Before reading
 * Read the tilte and list 10 words you think you might find in the text.

- Ocean - Pattern - Fish - Organisms - Model - Changes - Mathematical - Migration - Destruction - Biology

I think that mathematics is applied in biology to estimate the mortality rate of a particular marine species or also to calculate the gestation period of any animal. [] []
 * How can you use math applied to biology. Mention one thing you can think of.
 * Great **
 * What do you know about jelly fish? What kind of fish is it? If you don't know, find out, cut and paste an image of this fish. Please acknowledge the source.
 * Jellyfish** (also known as **jellies** or **sea jellies**) are free-swimming members of the phylum [|Cnidaria]. Jellyfish have several different morphologies that represent several different cnidarian classes including the [|Scyphozoa] (over 200 species), [|Staurozoa] (about 50 species), [|Cubozoa] (about 20 species), and [|Hydrozoa] (about 1000–1500 species that make jellyfish and many more that do not).[|[1]][|[2]] The jellyfish in these groups are also called, respectively, [|scyphomedusae], [|stauromedusae], [|cubomedusae], and [|hydromedusae]; **//[|medusa]//** is another word for //jellyfish//, and as such is used to refer specifically to the adult stage of the life cycle.

- Any measure of how spread out a set of data are, eg range, interquartile range, variance, standard deviation.
 * What is dispersion? If you don't know, find out, please acknowledge the source.

- The variation between the data values in a sample is called dispersion. There are several measures of dispersion standard deviation, range, inter-quartile range, the most common being the standard deviation. These measures indicate to what degree the individual observations of a data set are dispersed or 'spread out' around their mean.

[]

While Reading and After Reading 1. Click on the following link so that you can read the article. http://www.maths.unsw.edu.au/school/articles/jellyfish.html 2. Try to locate the words you though you were going to find in the text (question 1 before reading) List the words you found Ocean, Pattern, Fish, Organisms, Model, Mathematical, Migration, Biology

3. Find what the following referents in bold letters refer to in the text:
 * The species of Jellyfish studied are known as Aurelia and **these** are found over much of the world’s temperate oceans.
 * __THESE__**: refers to The species of Jellyfish known as Aurelia
 * By simulating the movement of the jellyfish over a 7,000-year period the study provides strong evidence that the world-wide dispersal post-dates European global shipping and trade, **which** began almost 500 years ago.
 * __ W __**** H ****__ ICH __** : refers to the world-wide dispersal.
 * Ships take in water for stability before a voyage and, despite preventative measures such as mid-ocean exchange/ flushing, **this 'foreign' water** and **its contents** can find its way into bays and harbours at the ships destination.
 * __ THIS “FOREIGN” WATER __** : refers to Ships
 * __ ITS CONTENTS __** : refers to Jellyfish
 * The computer model could answer similar questions about the migration and introduction of any suspected non-native marine creatures, according to **its** developers Professor Matthew England and Alex Sen Gupta.
 * __ ITS __** : refers to the computer model
 * Now we have a tool that can include data on currents, geography and the biology of an organism to help separate natural dispersal **from that which happens** through shipping and trade
 * __ FROM THAT W __**** H ****__ ICH HAPPENS __** : refers to

4. What is happening with the fish? The jellyfish are migrating to different places of all worlds by natural and human causes.

5. What explanation scientists had given?

Scientists explained that the jellyfish could not have migrated naturally and that one of the causes of this migration occurs via ballast water from international shipping and because of international trade of marine species.

6. What did mathematicians find out? What does the formula explain? Scientists related biological data and external events to find the dispersion of the jellyfish. They relationship the biological data with simulated ocean currents, climate, temperature, etc. .. and established a model of dispersion, with the next equation. Where:
 * //xt//** is the moon jellyfish location at time of **//t//**
 * //U//** is the current speed
 * //Δt//** is time
 * //Rn//** is a normal distributed random number
 * //Kh//** is a lateral mixing rate
 * //Cmix//** is tidal mixing near the coast.