i am doing a project for my bioligy class, and in one part i need to explain and give an example of predation for the tropical rainforest biome.
Chosen Answer:
Typically predators are large compared to the prey and able to take an array of food species. Predation is usually not a symbiosis since predators rarely form a close relationship with only one prey species. However some predatory prey relationships do drive prey towards protective patterns.
Toxic prey with prominent warning markings, easily recognized by the predator, have a greater rate of survival and reproduction than other less well marked members of their species. This type of predator prey relationship is aposematic (apo – away / sematic – signal of danger).
Predators selectively leave those with efficient ‘avoid me’ warning colorations indicating poisonous or venomous species with deterrent toxins.
Müllerian mimicry is when a number of honestly nonedible species adaptively converge on a warning pattern that is universally avoided by common predators.
Typically parasites are very small and highly adapted facultative or obligate symbionts. They are in a closely tied ecological relationship feeding on their host’s living tissue while also effectively hiding from the host’s immune system. Parasites do not usually immediately kill their host but live out their reproductive cycle while slowly consuming their one host. Many do not kill their host at all and some reside in more than one host where the second host acts as a vector.
Parasitoids blur the line between parasitism and predation. Parasitoid wasps paralyze, then lay eggs on host caterpillars. It is the hatched larvae that actually kill the host by feeding on living tissue.
Nematode trapping fungi blur the boundaries. They are sessile heterotrophs that trap passing nematodes, invade with hyphae and digest the worm. The fungus actually stops the moving animal to eat it so deserves to be considered a hunter.
http://sbli.ls.manchester.ac.uk/fungi/21st_Century_Guidebook_to_Fungi/Ch15_06.htm
by: gardengallivant
on: 22nd March 13