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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 ...
the ways plants use fruits and edible seeds to encourage animal aid in seed dispersal, and the way corals become photosynthetic with the help of the microorganism zooxanthellae . Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition , in which each species experiences reduced fitness, and exploitation , and with parasitism , in which one ...
Most flowering plants depend on animals, such as bees, moths, and butterflies, to transfer their pollen between different flowers, and have evolved to attract these pollinators by various strategies, including brightly colored, large petals with patterns only visible to under ultraviolet light, attractive scents, and the production of nectar, a ...
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.
Herbivory is of extreme ecological importance and prevalence among insects.Perhaps one third (or 500,000) of all described species are herbivores. [4] Herbivorous insects are by far the most important animal pollinators, and constitute significant prey items for predatory animals, as well as acting as major parasites and predators of plants; parasitic species often induce the formation of galls.
Pollination is the transfer of pollen from an anther of a plant to the stigma of a plant, later enabling fertilisation and the production of seeds. [1] Pollinating agents can be animals such as insects, for example beetles or butterflies; birds, and bats; water; wind; and even plants themselves.
Kleiber's law describes the relationship between an animal's size and its feeding strategy, saying that larger animals need to eat less food per unit weight than smaller animals. [21] Kleiber's law states that the metabolic rate (q 0 ) of an animal is the mass of the animal (M) raised to the 3/4 power: q 0 =M 3/4
An example of a topological food web (image courtesy of USDA) [1] The soil food web is the community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil. It describes a complex living system in the soil and how it interacts with the environment, plants, and animals. Food webs describe the transfer of energy between species in an ecosystem.