Interspecific interrelationships

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Interspecific interrelationships are relationships between individuals or populations of different species . They can be inhibiting or encouraging for one participant or both. Interspecific interrelationships are an important subject of research in ecology . The opposite of them are relationships between individuals of the same kind, i.e. intra-specific relationships .

Interspecific relationships lead to the adaptation of the survival, reproductive and food acquisition strategies of the species involved. If two species adapt to one another in a special way, one speaks of coevolution .

Different forms of interspecific interrelationships

  • If both participants have a benefit, one speaks of a symbiosis (in the broader sense). Rather loose partnerships are referred to as alliances, short-term partnerships for mutual benefit as mutualism . If species regularly live so closely together that the partnership is of very high importance or even vital, one speaks of symbiosis in the narrower sense.

See also

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  • Matthias Schaefer: Ecology. 3rd revised and expanded edition. G. Fischer, Jena 1992, ISBN 3-8252-0430-8 ( Dictionaries of Biology. UTB 430).