Biological interactions

Biological interactions are the effects that the organisms in a community have on each other. In the natural world no organism exists in absolute isolation, and thus every organism must interact with the environment and other organisms. An organism's interactions with its environment are fundamental to the survival of that organism and the functioning of the ecosystem as a whole.

In Ecology, biological interactions can involve individuals of the same species (intraspecific interactions) or individuals of different species (interspecific interactions). These can be further classified by either the mechanism of the interaction or the strength, duration and direction of their effects. Species may interact once in a generation (e.g. pollination) or live completely within another (e.g. endosymbiosis). Effects range from consumption of another individual (predation, herbivory, or cannibalism), to mutual benefit (mutualism). Interactions need not be direct; individuals may affect each other indirectly through intermediaries such as shared resources or common enemies.

Terms that explicitly indicate the quality of benefit or harm in terms of fitness experienced by participants in an interaction are listed in the chart. There are six possible combinations, ranging from mutually beneficial through neutral to mutually harmful interactions. The level of benefit or harm is continuous and not discrete, so a particular interaction may have a range from trivially harmful through to deadly, for example. It is important to note that these interactions are not always static. In many cases, two species will interact differently under different conditions. This is particularly true in, but not limited to, cases where species have multiple, drastically different life stages.

Competition is a mutually detrimental interaction between individuals, populations or species, but rarely between clades.

Amensalism is an interaction where an organism inflicts harm to another organism without any costs or benefits received by itself. A clear case of amensalism is where sheep or cattle trample grass. Whilst the presence of the grass causes negligible detrimental effects to the animal's hoof, the grass suffers from being crushed. Amensalism is often used to describe strongly asymmetrical competitive interactions, such as has been observed between the Spanish ibex and weevils of the genus Timarcha which feed upon the same type of shrub. Whilst the presence of the weevil has almost no influence on food availability, the presence of ibex has an enormous detrimental effect on weevil numbers, as they consume significant quantities of plant matter and incidentally ingest the weevils upon it.

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