Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 33
A yellow-billed oxpecker,
Buphagus africanus
, cleans ticks from the nostril of a
relaxed cape buffalo in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.
bridge-building, leading to a kind of “super-organism” that has enhanced
competitive ability.
Fermenting animals, whether they are ruminants or termites, can-
not survive without their microbes. In many cases the microbes have in
turn become so specialized that they cannot survive outside the stomachs
of their hosts. But together the animals and their microbes have produced
super-organisms that can ei ciently exploit food sources denied to the rest
of us. The microbes give their hosts the energy to fl ee from their predators,
and in return they gain a safe place to live. Even though their individual lives
are short, invariably terminating when their hosts digest them, their popula-
tions persist and thrive. The blanket term for such interactions is
symbiosis
or
living together. The types of symbioses that provide mutual benefi t for the
dif erent organisms involved are called
mutualisms
.
There are many other mutualistic interactions between species, though
most of these interactions do not rise to the level of the total interdepen-
dence that exists between the grazing animals and their microbes. I recently
