1. Community Interactions
EQ: What are Habitats, Niches, and Symbiotic relationships?

2. Habitat and Niche
All organisms has to live somewhere. Where they originate from is called Native Habitat.
Habitat: is location where an organism lives, uses resources, reproduces, and dies.
It’s like a home address.

3. If habitat is an organism’s address, then Niche is its job or profession.
Niche: a role that each species have within a community (an organism’s job)
Some are producers (food and shelter)
Some are food for others (rabbits)
Some are population control (predator and diseases)
Some are decomposers (cleaners)
All organisms have a role or niche.

4. An unglamorous and unwanted niche of the beloved vulture…is it important?

5. Symbioses Nothing in nature “lives” alone; all have niches.
i. Organisms always effect one-another = relationship.
Symbioses: close relationship between different species.
i. Example: flower and bees, clownfish and anemone, mosquitoes and human, lions and zebras.

6. There are five types of symbioses (relationship)
Predation
Parasitism
Competition
Mutualism
Commensalism

7. Predation
Predation: a relationship where one species eats another. (+/-)
Animal eats animal (orcas and seals)
Animal eats plant (deer and wildflowers)
Plant eats animals (orchid and fly trap)

9. The two species involved are predator and prey.
Predator: the species eating another species. (+)
1. Predators rely on: speed, strength, advance senses (sight, smell, hearing), stalking, poison, sharp body parts (claws, teeth, beaks), traps.

10. Prey: the species being consumed by the predator. (-)
1. Rely on: speed, agility, camouflage, poison, playing dead, armor, digging, flight, schooling. False warning, thorns

11. The most used defense is mimicry: animals color/appearance disguised as something else (camouflage).
Blends in with surrounding.
Pretends to look like something dangerous or poisonous.

14. Parasitism
Parasitism: a relationship where one species uses another for nutrient; but does not kill. (+/-)
Parasite: the species consuming the host.
Host: the species providing nutrients for the parasite.
i. Some parasites live on/in their host (worms, bacteria, fungus, chiggers, lice, crabs, fleas)
ii. Parasites living off host: mosquitoes, mites, leeches.

16. Competition
Competition: a relationship where two species need the same resource. (-/-)
i. Food, water, living space, sunlight, nesting location,
Competition will result in less resource for both species.

17. Mutualism
Mutualism: a relationship where both species rely and benefit from each other (+/+)
Sometimes relationship is so specialized that they cannot live without each other (termites and bacteria)
Help each other feed, reproduce, escape predator, cleaning, protection.

19. Commensalism
Commensalism: a relationship where one species benefit while having no effect on the other. (+/0)
Species nor helped nor harmed.
Example:
Whales and barnacles
Human and skin bacteria,
Buffalo and egret