This weeks #MutualismsOnMain is the venerable plant-pollinator mutualism. I’ll be honest I’m a little burned out of this interaction at the current moment but here’s a retoot of a paper thread I did a while back. We got the November cover of #OikosEcology with this picture taken by Dr. Xingwen Loy. The paper is here https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.09265

This weeks #MutualismsOnMain is an interaction that first got me interested in mutualisms! Ant-acacia mutualisms are a protection type interaction where the ant provides the plant with defense against herbivory while the plant provides a home and usually some food. These mutualisms are powerful—in some cases vastly shaping forest structure and communities! 📸 https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafka4prez shared under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
#ants #acacia #mutualisms

I’m going to post a regular series highlighting different #mutualisms each week. In this weeks #MutualismsOnMain let’s meet a fungal group I’m so enamored with right now. Epichloë are endophytes living in grass hosts. They provide the plant with protection from herbivores by producing a range of intense alkaloids. One neat feature of this microbe: vertical transmission! Plants can pass down their epichloë to their offspring.