Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours

When someone you know helps you out it's nice to return the favour. Even if it's just helping someone out with revision for an exam or telling them the information they may have missed in a lecture, doing this can then help me revise and I benefit. As a university student this occurs all of the time. This then lead me to wonder about mutualistic behaviours in the wild and the ways in which other species benefit. Within the Neotropics the Poison Dart Frog uses holds an interesting mutualistic relationship with different species of Bromeliad plants (they kind of look like the top of a pineapple). The Neotropics as you can imagine is largely exposed to high levels of rainfall, the water from this intense hydration will sit the folds and dips of the Bromeliad leaf structure. The Poison Dart Frog will then use this presence of water as a safe house for their young. Their tadpole young mature in these pools of water and benefit from the protection of the dense leaf structure. So where is the benefit to the plant, you might think? Well the nutrient waste produced by both the young frog and its mother are absorbed through the pool of water. So without directly knowing it frog’s presence benefits the Bromeliads growth. It's as if it's a way of saying thank you to the Bromeliad for protecting the frog’s young and providing a home. Let's hope we continue to help each other whether we also benefit or not.

Shopping for Shells

As we grow up through our lives, we develop mentally and physically. Children especially grow in their size at a considerably greater rate compared to that of their adult years. I know I definitely did, I became nearly 6ft tall by the time I was 13. So you can imagine the amount of clothes I collected on the way up, each item bigger than the last. Hermit crabs also share this need to change their appearance with their growing physiology. Though a Hermit crabs shell is its mobile home, the more the crab grows inside, the desire for a better fitting shell also grows. So what’s a Hermit crab to do when it's time to find a new "shell outfit"? The shore line is littered with potential new homes, however if one crab comes into contact with another crab with a shell they desire they both engage in a behaviour called "rapping". Though the thought of MC Hermit crabs is hilarious, the rapping behaviour isn't vocal but simply the knocking of each other’s shells to arrange a swap of shells for a better fit. So though we don't go around asking to swap each others clothes we do out grow them, just like the Hermit crab out grows his shell.