A team of environmental biologists is studying the concentration of mercury in tilefish. They catch 200 tilefish in the same area in the Gulf of Mexico, and take muscle tissue samples from an identical site in each fish. They homogenize the tissue sample (chop it into small pieces so that it is the same throughout) from each fish and take 5 samples which are analyzed for mercury. What is the most likely reason the biologists caught so many fish, and analyzed so many samples from each fish?

Question 4 options:

because they expect widely varying results from each fish

to improve their efficiency in processing fish samples

to obtain an average that accurately represents fish from this area

because the remaining tissue could be used in another experiment

The answer "to obtain an average that accurately represents fish from this area " should be the answer because a large sample size is crucial for being a good representation of the whole population, and by taking many samples from each fish scientists can then determine the average mercury concentration within each fish, which then allow them to give a good estimate of the mercury concentration in the fish population because of their sufficient sample size.

Explanation:

step 1 ammonium can be absorbed by plants, but some is converted into nitrates which are better for plants to absorb. this is called nitrification. 2. step 2 the deer eats the plants and uses the nitrogen-containing proteins for cell growth. 3. step 3 bacteria in the soil conduct nitrogen fixation to convert nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into ammonium. 4. step 4 some of the nitrates are absorbed back into plants, but denitrification breaks down the nitrates into nitrogen gas released back into the atmosphere. 5. step 5 nitrogen is found in the urine, which gets broken down into ammonium through the process of ammonification. 6. step 6 plants absorb the ammonium and begin assimilation, the process to add the nitrogen to protein.