How plants and animals rely on each other?

LIVING TOGETHER

Animals and plants often rely on other living things for survival. Food, shelter, and pollination are some of the clearest examples of this. However, some animals and plants have much closer relationships. They can be partners, providing things like food or protection for each other. Some tag along with others without providing anything in return. Many do worse, latching on to other organisms as parasites, which can harm or even kill their often helpless hosts.

1. CORAL Corals trap prey in their stinging tentacles. They pass some of the nutrients from their victims to tiny algae living in their tissues. These use the sun’s energy to make sugar, and they pass some of this food back to the corals.
2. HUMMINGBIRD Hummingbirds gather flower nectar, and in the process they carry pollen from flower to flower. Some plants have evolved flowers that match the bills of particular hummingbird species, to encourage the birds to visit them and deliver their pollen efficiently.
3. ANTS AND APHIDS Aphids are tiny insects that feed on sugary plant sap. They must eat a lot of it to get enough protein, and they excrete the excess sugar as drops of sweet honeydew. Ants love to drink this, so they “farm” the aphids, protecting them from predators, ensuring a constant supply.
4. CUCKOO Cuckoos are “brood parasites” — they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Each young cuckoo hatches quickly and destroys any other eggs in the nest, so it can eat all the food brought by its foster parents. It soon outgrows its hosts, who often do not seem to notice its massive size.
5. STRANGLER VINE Some slender rainforest plants, such as figs, grow by encircling a tree and slowly killing it — a process that can take up to 150 years. They steal the tree’s nutrients, and eventually the tree dies and decays, leaving the fig plant standing alone.
6. OXPECKER Hoofed grazing animals, such as impalas, are often plagued by tiny bloodsuckers, such as ticks, that they cannot remove by scratching. In Africa, stout-billed birds called oxpeckers do the job for them by picking the parasites off their skin and eating them.
7. REMORA Predatory sharks have very sharp teeth that cut their prey to shreds. The scraps are eagerly devoured by fish called remoras, which travel with the sharks by clinging to their skin. They do their hosts no harm, and the sharks seem to ignore them.

Picture Credit : Google