Relationships

DIFFERENCES

Plants use energy directly from the sun to make food.
Animals eat plants or the flesh of each other to obtain their energy.
Plants use carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis to make sugars and starches and give off oxygen.
Animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide.

PLANTS AND PLANTS

PLANTS SUPPORT PLANTS: Tall plants block sunlight the smaller plants need for growth. Some small plants use thorns to hang on larger plants to help them grow upward to the sun. Some curl tendrils around a supporting stem.

EPIPHYTES: Small plants whose roots cling to their host for support. Bromeliads living in the treetops form little ponds in which insects, snails, frogs, and salamanders live.

PARASITES: Plants that steal nutrients from the host plant. The European mistletoe is a partial parasitic plant. Its leaves make food but it obtains water and minerals from its host. Birds eat the berries of the mistletoe and wipe their beak on a branch. The sticky seed glued to the bark, germinates and grows. The leafless dodder, a total parasitic plant, attaches itself to only one kind of host. Its roots penetrate the stem of the host and it relies entirely on the host for food and water. A host plant can be killed by a parasitic plant, such as the honey fungus and many molds.

SYMBIOSIS: Plants that live together with both plants benefiting from the relationship. When one dies, the other dies. Young orchids, oaks, beeches and pine depend on minute fungus. These fungi make a fine network of thread called mycorrhiza, which surround the roots, enabling them to grow better. There is no room in an orchid seed for food. For the very small seeds to germinate, they must be surrounded by a certain type of fungus. The fungus thread uses the humus in the soil for food and pushes itself into the germinated orchid seed. The seed uses some of the fungus for its own growth. Later, the fungus takes some food from the orchid.

Plants remove minerals from the soil ® Plants are eaten by animals ® Minerals are returned to the soil via the animals’ droppings and dead bodies.

Plants remove minerals from the soil ® Plants are eaten by animals ® Minerals are returned to the soil via the animals’ droppings and dead bodies.

PLANTS AND ANIMALS

PLANTS AND ANIMALS Symbiosis: In a shallow, clear, warm sea, the reef-building corals are made up of minute plants called zooxanthellae— 470,000 of them may exist in a cubic inch of coral. These plants use carbon dioxide to make sugars. Some of the left over carbon forms carbonate. The coral combines the carbonate with calcium to make a hard, chalky material, which becomes the coral’s hard skeleton. The coral grows 14 times faster in sunlight.

FLOWERS AND INSECTS: The earliest land plant fossil dates back 400 million years. This fossil shows marks where it was nibbled by insects. Insects are very important in the pollination of plants by taking the pollen to a neighboring plant. This prevents self-pollination which results in poor seeds and weak plants.

The first flowerless plants were reproduced by spores. The spores made good food for many primitive insects. Flowers first appeared 120 million years ago and had lots of pollen for the insects. There were no butterflies, bees, or flies. Beetles crawled from flower to flower pollinating along the way. Flowers began to evolve ways to attract other insects for pollinators. The lines or patterns on a plant are a "roadmap" so insects can find the nectar and pollinate the plant. These plants have sticky pollen so the pollen sticks to the hairy body of its insect pollinator. Many species of flowers have evolved ways to trap the insect pollinator until it has pollinated the plant.

Orchids requiring a specific pollinator look and smell like that insect pollinator. Orchids pollinated by carrion flies are colored and scented like decomposing flesh. One species (orphus) looks exactly like a female bee. The males try to mate with the flower and carry away the pollen. Seeds of plants like the dandelion blow in the air, carrying insects, such as aphids, great distances to form new colonies. The young eat bug remains and even winter over.

Interesting Relationship Facts

	Insects and birds are protected by the plants.
	Plants are very sensitive to changes in the environment and must protect themselves. In the southwest, on an extremely hot day, one species of tiny cactus will retract entirely into the ground.
	In another study, noise, like what is heard in Manhattan, stunts the growth of tobacco plants by 40%
	Phycomyces, a mold that looks like a tiny ball on top of a long stalk, grows 1/8" an hour. It emits a gas in the concentrated space between the stalk and an intruding object. This gas enables the plant to grow faster and away from the threat.
	Seaweed that grow on a Caribbean coral reef emit chemicals that sicken or kill seaweed-eating fish.
	Some marine animals have developed the ability to concentrate the toxins in their intestines to protect them from larger animals. Scientists call this plant-fish interaction "evolutionary arms race"
	There are:
	400+ species of carnivorous plants in the world.
	45 species of carnivorous plants in North America
	20 species of carnivorous plants in Michigan
	Michigan’s largest carnivorous plant is the Northern pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea). Prey is attracted to the pitcher’s red lip, eats the intoxicating nectar, becomes stupefied, and encounters a pool of rainwater that has collected in the pitcher. The sides are too slippery and the victim drones. This is an example of a passive capture system – gravity, rainwater and enzymes do the rest. Large insects and spiders sometimes escape. Ants of all size are good at escaping.
	The round leafed sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) captures its food on its sticky dew drops. If the prey tries to escape, the sundew’s tentacles curl and leaf around it. This plant plays an active role in capturing its prey.