I am writing a book chapter about plant interactions and I can think of many examples of mutualistic interactions between plants and microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) or animals, but I am not aware of any plant-plant mutualistic association. Can anyone help with this? Thanks a lot!
Hi Guido,
Greetings from Singapore. We just published a book about Aerial plants. For mutualistic associations, we found the myrmecophytes in South East Asia generally have mutualistic association with their host plants.
cheers
Jean Yong
Book A Guide to the Common Epiphytes and Mistletoes of Singapore
Hydnophytum formicarum (Rubiaceae) is a good example of a mutualistic plant-plant association. Good luck
Hi Jean,
thank you very much indeed for your reply and for the file of the book! I will read it all with much interest :-)
Hi Jean,
some comments. I have gone through the book (thanks again) and I could not find any information concerning a mutualistic interaction between plant and plant, involving H. formicarum. Actually, some pages are missing in the pdf file (52-56). Can you tell me something more? What is the advantage for the host plant and for the epiphyte? Thanks!
Facilitation. For specific examples, see reviews of this topic.
Thank you Steven! I will need to go through the difference between "mutualism" and "facilitation", but it seems to be a good direction.
Facilitation can be either mutualism (both benefit) or commensalism (one benefits and the other is unaffected). Some of the classic examples of plant facilitation such as nurse plant interactions or facilitations during succession are commensalisms, but there are also many examples of facilitations that are mutualisms, especially in stressful habitats such as salt marshes and sand dunes.
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