Question

You discover a species if beetles that lives exclusively on shrubs. You hypothesize that these two species are obligate mutualists.

A) describe an experiment that you could perform to test your hypothesis including the treatments and the control

B) what pattern do you predict to observe in your experiment if the relationship is mutualism? Explain

C) what pattern do you predict to observe in your experiment if the relationship is herbivory rather than mutualism? Explain

Answer 1

A. Obligate mutualism means the species cannot survive without one another. To demonstrate that in treatment we separte the bettles from the shurb and in controls we take them together as ththey existed.

B. If the experiment is mutualism we observe that in treatment in which the shurbs are separated from bettles are died and in control where they both are together do not die.

C. If the relationship is herbivory the bettles feed on the shurbs where shurbs are prey and bettles are the predators . The growth rate and popluation size depends on each other inverslyproportional to each other. If bettles poluation increases shurbs poluation decreasea and vice versa.