Back to: Jss2 Basic Science (BST)

Introduction

On Earth, nothing has its own little world. Species interact with each other every day. This connection is a key part of how organisms change and grow over time. An ecological relationship is a relationship between two or more living things in an ecosystem. Every living thing in an environment is linked to everything else. Each encounter depends on what happened in the last one. There are a lot of different ways that each population interacts with the others. Ecological relationships help explain how things interact.

There are two ecological relationships that work against each other and four that work well together. Predation and competition are two things that go against each other. Symbiotic interactions are things like mutualism, commensalism, amensalism, neutralism, cooperation, and parasitism.

The ecological relationship of an organism is based on how it has changed over time in response to its environment.

Types Of Relationship

There are six ways in which organisms that live in the same place are related. Some of these kinds of relationships are commensalism, amensalism, mutualism, parasitism, predation, and competition.

Commensalism

This type of interaction is when one organism gets something good from another organism without hurting the other organism. One common example is the link between the remora fish and the shark. The Remora sticks to the shark with a disc of suction behind its head. It eats the shark’s food scraps, but it doesn’t hurt the shark.

Amensalism

This is the type of relationship between two organisms in which one organism hurts the other without hurting itself. In the tropical rainforest, where tall trees tower over smaller plants and block the sun from getting to the smaller plants,. Sunlight is important for plants to grow, so a short plant that doesn’t get enough of it may die.

Mutualism

This is the interaction between two organisms, which is good for both of them. One example is the link between the bee and the flower. Bees fly from flower to flower to get nectar, which they then turn into food. When bees land on a flower, they pick up pollen on their hairy bodies. When they land on another flower, some of the pollen from the first flower falls on the second flower and fertilises it. This will help the plants grow. Thanks to this mutualistic relationship, the bees get to eat and the flowering plants get to grow more.

Parasitism

This is a relationship between two different species in which the parasite feeds on the host, hurting or killing it. The parasite lives either on or in the body of the host. Think about how a mosquito and a man interact with each other. When the mosquito bites the man, it gets his blood and gives him the malaria parasite at the same time.

Predation

Predation is when one species kills another. Predation is what happens when lions eat buffalo.

Competition

Competition is the interaction that happens when two species fight for the same limited resources. Animals compete for food by fighting or running to get it first. Plants  fight for light, water, and nutrients in the soil