Every organism has a niche, a way of feeding, sheltering and interacting with all other organisms in the community of species in the ecosystem, either directly or indirectly.
Australian Potoroos are omnivorous foragers, willing to eat roots, tubers, fungi, fruits, seeds, insects and larvae, depending on seasonal availability but prefer to seek underground fungi known as truffles. They are forest dwelling marsupials that dig for truffles. This diet adaptation makes the Potoroo one of the most fungi-dependent of mammals in the world. Their niche actively improves the health of the forest by dispersing beneficial fungi spores that form mycorrhizae with tree roots.
The truffle’s niche is that they are sessile heterotrophs that live in a mutual symbiosis with the roots of various Eucalypts and Acacias. The fungi help the trees to absorb more water and nutrients in return for photosynthates for food. The mycorrhizal fungi are sometimes essential for seedling survival, providing them with water & nutrients until they are mature enough to be self supportive and capable of participating with mycorrhizae.
The trees are sessile autotrophs that fix carbon as photosynthate and produce O2 as a waste product and regulate transpiration of water from the soil. Together these organisms form communities that interact in mutually interdependent ways in their ecosystem.
Every organism has a niche, a way of feeding, sheltering and interacting with all other organisms in the community of species in the ecosystem, either directly or indirectly.
Australian Potoroos are omnivorous foragers, willing to eat roots, tubers, fungi, fruits, seeds, insects and larvae, depending on seasonal availability but prefer to seek underground fungi known as truffles. They are forest dwelling marsupials that dig for truffles. This diet adaptation makes the Potoroo one of the most fungi-dependent of mammals in the world. Their niche actively improves the health of the forest by dispersing beneficial fungi spores that form mycorrhizae with tree roots.
The truffle’s niche is that they are sessile heterotrophs that live in a mutual symbiosis with the roots of various Eucalypts and Acacias. The fungi help the trees to absorb more water and nutrients in return for photosynthates for food. The mycorrhizal fungi are sometimes essential for seedling survival, providing them with water & nutrients until they are mature enough to be self supportive and capable of participating with mycorrhizae.
The trees are sessile autotrophs that fix carbon as photosynthate and produce O2 as a waste product and regulate transpiration of water from the soil. Together these organisms form communities that interact in mutually interdependent ways in their ecosystem.