Question

Compare and contrast parasitism, herbivory, predation and mutualism (2pts). Give an example of each, and discuss how the relationships of these might change over time (3pts).

Answer 1

Predation is a type of interaction in which one species eliminates other species. Like the interaction of two animal species where the dominating one kills the weaker one for the food. Herbivory is a special class of predation in which an animal or an insect eat plant parts and eliminates its parts. In parasitism also a parasite is living on a host using its machinery for a living but ultimately it is having harmful effects on the host. So it is also a type of predation interactions. In mutualism, two species are in equilibrium with each other that both of them equally benefitted with their interaction like rhizobium bacteria living in the root nodules of leguminous plants. It is also a type of predation interaction in which both of them depend on each other for the food from the plant.

An example of predation includes eating of insects by frogs. As for frogs insects are their common prey but it harms the insect population and that's why with the period the prey also modifies its physical appearance to fool the predator to protect themselves like changing color or change their body appearance. An example of herbivory is plants sometimes mimic themselves to protect their leaves from the eaters by releasing chemicals to protect themselves. An example of parasitism includes living of tapeworms in humans which cause infection of tissues but due to alteration in host mechanisms, these parasites are less harmful now. An example of mutualism is root nodules of leguminous plants contain Rhizobium bacteria which helps in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen and in exchange it gets food from the plant.