Homework help-biology!!!!!!!!!!!?

Question

ok I need to find an example of commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism in the following biomes:
-Temperate grassland
-tropical dry forests
-tropical rainforests
-temperate forests
-coniferous forests
-fresh water
-marine
-boreal (tiaga)
-tundra
-temperate shrubland/woodland

i know what Mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism mean i just need examples. i still need to find some in
-tropical dry forest
-temperate grassland
-temperate woodland
-NW coniferous forest
-tundra
-fresh water
-marine

Answer 1

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commensalism
“Commensalism is a term employed in ecology to describe a relationship between two living organisms where one benefits and the other is not significantly harmed or helped. It is derived from the English word commensal, meaning the sharing of food, and used of human social interaction. The word derives from the Latin com mensa, meaning sharing a table.”

There are 3 types:
“Phoresy: One animal attaching to another animal for transportation only. This concerns mainly arthropods, examples of which are mites on insects (such as beetles, flies, or bees), pseudoscorpions on mammals[1] and millipedes on birds[2]. Phoresy can be either obligate or facultative (induced by environmental conditions).
Inquilinism: Using a second organism for housing. Examples are epiphytic plants (such as many orchids) which grow on trees, or birds that live in holes in trees.
Metabiosis: A more indirect dependency, in which the second organism uses something the first created, however after the death of the first. An example is the hermit crabs that use gastropod shells to protect their bodies. “

So a butterfly or moth that lays their eggs on a plant leaf would be such a creature. Owls and woodpeckers like to make holes in trees and live there, as do squirrels, chipmunks and others. They don’t really hurt the tree very much by doing so. True that squirrels and chipmunks do harvest the fruit and seeds so that can harm the tree. But if an animal eats an apple and then eliminates it in a pile of waste that helps the apple tree spread; so some of those relationships can be commensalism.

According to Wikipedia:
“A Mutualism is an interaction between individuals of two different species, where both individuals derive a fitness benefit, for example increased survivorship. Similar interactions within a species are known as co-operation.”

An example would be the clown fish that are immune to the deadly sting of sea anemone. They live in and among them and eat the fungus that would threaten them.

“Examples include cleaner fish, pollination and seed dispersal, gut flora and nitrogen fixation by fungi.”

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism
“Parasitism is one version of symbiosis ("living together"), a phenomenon in which two organisms which are phylogenetically unrelated co-exist over a prolonged period of time, usually the lifetime of one of the individuals. The requirement for a prolonged interaction precludes predatory Joe Boxer or episodic interactions (such as a mosquito feeding on a host), which are usually not seen as symbiotic relationships. Symbiosis encompasses commensalism ("eating at the same table", wherein two organisms co-exist in the same space, and one organism benefits while neither harming nor helping the other), through mutualism (wherein both species benefit from the interaction) to parasitism, wherein one organism, usually physically smaller of the two (the parasite) benefits and the other (the host) is harmed. (Various forms of "social parasitism", kleptoparasitism, and "cheating parasitism", as discussed below, are characterized by a less close association between a parasite and a host, however.) Especially in the field of medical parasitology, the term "parasite" has come to mean a eukaryotic, pathogenic organism. Thus, protozoan and metazoan infectious agents are classified as parasites while bacteria and viruses are not. Interestingly, fungi are not discussed in textbooks of medical parasitology, even though they are eukaryotic.“

That will give you some clues to start your search. Then next thing you need to do is look up the types of terrain and find out what animals inhabit the ecology and how they interact with it. Then classify them as parasites, mutalismic, or Commensali.

Tropical rainforests are filled with the most life and fungus can live almost anywhere so you can include fungi in that category. Monkeys that live in trees are commensiali to them, orchids are parasitic taking over the tree and not helping the tree at all, in fact they block some of the light to the trees. Wild Boar and tree frogs have a commensiail relationship. The wild boar makes mud holes to wallow in, without those wallows the tree frogs would have no place to lay their eggs, but they don’t help the boars in any way. The diseases and viruses of the world are almost always parasitolical and they too can be found almost anywhere. So there are some examples from the Rainforest to a bunch of other climates.

The tundra is going to be the toughest since it will have the least number of life forms. Investigate lichen and moss. Human reindeer herders have a Mutualism relationship with each other, the humans protect the herd and lead it to new food sources while the humans use the skin, meet, milk, even the bone for their lives. Eskimo have the same relationship with their sled dogs. I don’t know of any parasites that live there though.

Most of the terrain types are self explanatory, except boreal (tiga).

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreal_ecosystem
“Boreal is usually applied to ecosystems localized to subarctic (Northern hemisphere) and subantarctic (Southern hemisphere) zones, although Austral is also used for the latter. A "boreal forest", also known as the taiga, is the set of forest ecosystems that can survive in northern, specifically subarctic, regions. The ecosystems that lie immediately to the south (in the Northern hemisphere) or to the north (in the Southern hemisphere) of boreal zones are often called hemiboreal.” Tiga is the ecology in the coldest parts of Sibera, Northern Europe, and Canada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga), which is similar to tundra; so you might want to go the plains of Mongolia for tundra; better yet go for the Eurasian Steppes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Steppe) for help there.

Answer 2

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