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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.
The human population exploits and depends on many animal and plant species for food, mainly through agriculture, but also by exploiting wild populations, notably of marine fish. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ] Livestock animals are raised for meat across the world; they include (2011) around 1.4 billion cattle , 1.2 billion sheep and 1 billion domestic pigs .
Pollination has driven the coevolution of flowering plants and their animal pollinators for over 100 million years. See also: Pollination and Plant-pollinator interactions In pollination, pollinators including insects ( entomophily ), some birds ( ornithophily ), and some bats , transfer pollen from a male flower part to a female flower part ...
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 .
An animal that exhibits a high degree of sociality is called a social animal. The highest degree of sociality recognized by sociobiologists is eusociality . A eusocial taxon is one that exhibits overlapping adult generations , reproductive division of labor , cooperative care of young, and—in the most refined cases—a biological caste system .
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.
The domestication of vertebrate animals is the relationship between non-human vertebrates and humans who have an influence on their care and reproduction. [7] In his 1868 book The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Charles Darwin recognized the small number of traits that made domestic species different from their wild ancestors.