List of symbiotic relationships

This is an incomplete list of notable mutualistic symbiotic relationships, in which different species have a cooperative or mutually dependent relationship.

Humans and cultivated plants
Humans and domesticated animals
Humans and intestinal bacteria
Humans and the Greater Honeyguide bird (which may have a similar relationship with the Ratel or "honey badger")

Vascular plants and fungi in mycorrhizae
Flowering plants and pollinators such as bees
Leafcutter ants and the fungus they "farm" (note also the third mutualist: a bacterium that secretes a chemical that kills molds that would otherwise feed on the fungus "farmed" by the ants)
Leafhopper and meat ant
Acacia Ants (Pseudomyrmex ferruginea) with the Swollen Thorn Acacia Tree (Acacia cornigera)
Legumes and rhizobia (nitrogen-fixing bacteria)
Euprymna squid (family Sepiolidae) and bioluminescent bacteria (Vibrio fischeri)
Anglerfish and bioluminescent bacteria
Moray eels and cleaner shrimp or cleaner fish at cleaning stations
Goby fish and shrimp

Corals and Zooxanthella
Sea anemones and clownfish, crabs or shrimps
Deep-sea pompeii worms and thermophilic bacteria
Ruminants such as cows and their intestinal bacteria and protists
Termites and their intestinal bacteria and protists
Egyptian Plovers and crocodiles (not scientifically documented)
Oxpeckers and rhinoceroses
Polydnavirus and parasitoid wasps
Cycads and cyanobacteria
Foraminifera and algae
Grasses and endophytic fungi
Sponges and algae
Aphids and Buchnera bacteria^[1]
Azolla (water fern) and Anabaena (cyanobacteria)
Ambrosia Beetles and fungi
Sharks and remora
fig trees and Amazon fruit bats
Lichen (mutualism)
Mycorrhizzae and White Oak (mutualism)

Note

Some of these relationships are so close that we speak of the composite of two species as one unit, for example, we speak of the composite of algae and fungi as lichens. This is analogous to our speaking of a modulator and a demodulator as a modem.

References

^ Douglas, A E (1998). "Nutritional interactions in insect-microbial symbioses: Aphids and their symbiotic bacteria Buchnera". Annual Review of Entomology. 43: 17–38. ISSN 00664170. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

External links

The Role of Cooperation in Nature -- article on Jehovah's Witnesses Official Web Site

[1] Douglas, A E (1998). "Nutritional interactions in insect-microbial symbioses: Aphids and their symbiotic bacteria Buchnera". Annual Review of Entomology. 43: 17–38. ISSN 00664170. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

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