Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
For example, exploitative interactions between a predator and prey can result in the extinction of the victim (the prey, in this case), as the predator, by definition, kills the prey, and thus reduces its population. [2] Another effect of these interactions is in the coevolutionary "hot" and "cold spots" put forth by geographic mosaic theory ...
Mobbing is the harassing of a predator by many prey animals. Mobbing is usually done to protect the young in social colonies. For example, red colobus monkeys exhibit mobbing when threatened by chimpanzees, a common predator. The male red colobus monkeys group together and place themselves between predators and the group's females and juveniles.
Convergent evolution—the repeated evolution of similar traits in multiple lineages which all ancestrally lack the trait—is rife in nature, as illustrated by the examples below. The ultimate cause of convergence is usually a similar evolutionary biome , as similar environments will select for similar traits in any species occupying the same ...
A classic example of amensalism is the microbial production of antibiotics that can inhibit or kill other, susceptible microorganisms. A clear case of amensalism is where sheep or cattle trample grass. Whilst the presence of the grass causes negligible detrimental effects to the animal's hoof, the grass suffers from being crushed.
The extensive research about pathogens shows that they can evolve within a month, whereas animal hosts such as humans take centuries to make large evolutionary changes. [5] Parasite virulence and host resistance are variables that strongly impact a pathogen's ability to replicate and be distributed to many hosts.
In a gene centered view of evolution, the genes of predator and prey can be thought of as competing for the prey's body. [120] However, the "life-dinner" principle of Dawkins and Krebs predicts that this arms race is asymmetric: if a predator fails to catch its prey, it loses its dinner, while if it succeeds, the prey loses its life. [120]
Hosts and parasites exert reciprocal selective pressures on each other, which may lead to rapid reciprocal adaptation.For organisms with short generation times, host–parasite coevolution can be observed in comparatively small time periods, making it possible to study evolutionary change in real-time under both field and laboratory conditions.
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. [1] The entomologist E. O. Wilson characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". [2]