Symbiotic relationships between animals and their environments are varied and complex. Some symbioses must be established and re-established with each generation, such as bacterial flora in an animal’s gut; this type of symbiosis can just as easily be destroyed. However, many symbiotic relationships take a long time to become entrenched, over the course of hundreds, thousands or eveen millions of years. Once disturbed or injured these can be difficult if not impossible to re-establish.
A symbiotic relationship re-established annually occurs between migratory song birds and the wild piquin chili peppers. Chili pepper seeds are dispersed and the chili has literally jumped from continent to continent, spread by birds. The birds meanwhile are sustained for flight by feeding on these peppers, plentifully growing along the path of the previous seasonal migration. This mutualistic symbiotic relationship benefits both the animal and the plant.
Over thousands of years, as evidenced in African mythology, hyenas have lived in the vicinity of lion prides. The hyenas benefit by feeding on carcass remains after the lions have finished their own feeding, and left. The lions do not benefit much, but they don’t suffer either, and they generally ignore the hyenas’ presence. This represents a type of symbiotic commensalism, in which one member gains, and the other one is not affected. In this case, neither hyenas nor the lions have changed physically much to accommodate this, but their behavior and perhaps even their race memory is affected over the course of time.
On the other hand, the mouthparts and body shape of ticks have taken many thousands of years to evolve for their role as parasites. A parasitic symbiosis benefits one member to the harm of the other. This does not have to be a severe loss to the offended party, but is not healthy either. Ticks for example are benefited by living on deer, to the mammal’s loss of vitality. Over the lengthy passage of evolution, the tick has developed a body design almost impossible for the deer to dislodge, leaving the tick entirely in control of the process.
Parasitic symbiotic relationships are often seen fairly quickly in a disrupted ecosystem. When domesticated animals overgraze their habitat, the animals initially benefit, but the plants can not recover, resulting in soil erosion and loss of habitat for native species. Waterways used indiscreetly cause water to be sullied permanently by animal waste or human debris.
Quick or slow to emerge, one other symbiotic relationship of interest is that of mimicry, in which an animal imitates something else found in its environment, to its own advantage, whether for disguise or as a scare tactic. Sometimes this develops over the evolution of countless generations such as with the walking stick insect, which has evolved to resemble not only a stick, but a type of stick or even a leaf from its local environment, With this disguise it can remain virtually invisible to outsiders. Mimicry may also develop very quickly through a genetic mutation in a single animal. If this mutation is passed on, this can become a predominant trait for following generations.
The interdependence of life, the development of symbiotic relationships of animals to their environment, is indeed complex, easily destroyed or nurtured by the right balance over time.
