INTERACTION AMONG LIVING ORGANISMS

(A) The various forms of interaction

1. Living things interact among themselves in order to obtain food and protection.

2. Interaction may involve animal and animal, plant and plant or animal and plant.

3. Interaction between living organisms in an ecosystem will :

(a) Create equilibrium in the environment.
(b) Control the size of a population in a community.

4. There are three types of interactions among organisms :

(a) Predator-prey
(b) Symbiosis that consits of commonsalism, mutualism and parasitism.
(c) Competition.

Predator-prey relationship.

(a) The animals that hunt other animals

for food are called predators, while the
hunted animals
are preys.
(b) The predators which are carnivores
have powerful jaws, sharp and strong teeth,
good
stereoscopic vision, sharp claws or
hard and strong beaks.
. (c) The preys have a wide field of
monoscopic vision to detect predators or are
able to camouflage
with their surroundings in order to
escape from the predators.
(d) The examples are tigers (predators)
and horses (preys), eagles (predators) and
rabbit (preys).
(e) Diagram 4.1 shows the predator-prey
relationship.