Cooperation

Again the idea of co-evolution keeps entering my realm.  This time at my Brooklyn Botanical Garden Botany course Uli, my professor, introduced us to the ant plant.  Myrmecophyte plants, also commonly known as ant plants, native to south Asia are epiphytes.  Epiphytes may often be considered parasitic but they only use their host for physical support.  While the Myrmecophyte plant relies on trees for a home, the plant also is a host for a colony of ants. 

Its swollen stem is a suitable location for ants to borrow in a claim their territory.  This doesn’t have any negative effects on the plant and actually the ants provide nutrition via droppings and fend off any unwanted trespasser that may cause harm to the plant and their colony by attack.   Another great example of co-evolution. 

I recently heard the term cooperation used in terms of natural selection.  Perhaps it is an organism’s ability to cooperate with other species to survive at a higher rate than the ones who are fighting.  If so the homo genus should soon find a more harmonious way to exist on this planet if we want to survive.

Another fascinating blog to check out by the Natural History Museum Curator Susan Perkins explores a new parasite every day for a year at Parasite of the Day.