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Birch includes animals, plants, fungi, and microbes among critical interactions with humans: [9] plants too are incredibly important determinants: for mobile hunter-gatherers, they might dictate a seasonal move; for sedentary agriculturalists, the reliability of your crop yields means the difference between survival and extinction. [9]
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 ...
Materials derived from plants are collectively called plant products. Edible plants have long been a source of nutrition for humans , and the reliable provision of food through agriculture and horticulture is the basis of civilization since the Neolithic Revolution .
estimates of tropical rainforest plants with seed dispersal mutualisms with animals range at least from 70% to 93.5%. [8] In addition, mutualism is thought to have driven the evolution of much of the biological diversity we see, such as flower forms (important for pollination mutualisms) and co-evolution between groups of species.
Humans depend on flowering plants for food, either directly or as feed in animal husbandry. More broadly, agriculture includes agronomy for arable crops, horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and forestry , including both flowering plants and conifers, for timber.
For example, mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia provide plants with nutrients in exchange for food, ants are recruited by ant plants to provide protection, [109] honey bees, bats and other animals pollinate flowers [110] [111] and humans and other animals [112] act as dispersal vectors to spread spores and seeds.
Herbivores form an important link in the food chain because they consume plants to digest the carbohydrates photosynthetically produced by a plant. Carnivores in turn consume herbivores for the same reason, while omnivores can obtain their nutrients from either plants or animals. Due to a herbivore's ability to survive solely on tough and ...
A few animal species and many plant species, however, are the result of hybrid speciation, including important crop plants such as wheat, where the number of chromosomes has been doubled. A form of often intentional human-mediated hybridization is the crossing of wild and domesticated species.