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Plant-animal interactions are important pathways for the transfer of energy within ecosystems, where both advantageous and unfavorable interactions support ecosystem health. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Plant-animal interactions can take on important ecological functions and manifest in a variety of combinations of favorable and unfavorable associations, for ...
There are five main modes of seed dispersal: gravity, wind, ballistic, water, and by animals. Some plants are serotinous and only disperse their seeds in response to an environmental stimulus. Dispersal involves the letting go or detachment of a diaspore from the main parent plant. [15]
Bryoliths document a mutualistic symbiosis between a hermit crab and encrusting bryozoans. Many herbivores have mutualistic gut flora to help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. [5] This gut flora comprises cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria living in the herbivores' intestines. [40]
Mutualism describes the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit. [1] Mutualism is a common type of ecological interaction. Prominent examples are: the nutrient exchange between vascular plants and mycorrhizal fungi, the fertilization of flowering plants by pollinators,
Coevolution as a major topic for study in nature expanded rapidly from the 1960s, when Daniel H. Janzen showed coevolution between acacias and ants (see below) and Paul R. Ehrlich and Peter H. Raven suggested how coevolution between plants and butterflies may have contributed to the diversification of species in both groups.
Cooperation exists not only in humans but in other animals as well. The diversity of taxa that exhibits cooperation is quite large, ranging from zebra herds to pied babblers to African elephants. Many animal and plant species cooperate with both members of their own species and with members of other species.
In a detrital web, plant and animal matter is broken down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then carnivores. [69] There are often relationships between the detrital web and the grazing web. Mushrooms produced by decomposers in the detrital web become a food source for deer, squirrels, and mice in the ...
Plant communication encompasses communication using volatile organic compounds, electrical signaling, and common mycorrhizal networks between plants and a host of other organisms such as soil microbes, [2] other plants [3] (of the same or other species), animals, [4] insects, [5] and fungi. [6]