Requirements:
¨I have to write a short story. In this story, I have to pretend that I'm traveling in an area and notice different plants, animals, and other species. I have to use my imagination and create pretend organisms, or use examples of real organisms.
I have to use examples that demonstrate each of these types of relationships: predator-prey, commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism.
In the story, I must be sure to compare and contrast the relationships that I observe.¨
Story:
Agent Kawaii_Kay´s capsule made a smooth landing as it touched down on the planet. The ground here wasn´t very firm, so she had to stop every once in a while to pull her foot out from its sucking spongy surface. As she half-walked-half-wobbled to the treeline, the first thing she noticed were the trees. Each one twisted in an upwards spiral towards the sky. They had holes in them. The holes were evenly spaced and she could see to the other side. Their insides were lined with long red hairs that formed a symmetrical pattern. Wind blew through them, producing a low hollow whistle. Some small mite-like creatures scurried within the fields of red hair, snatching any particles of edible material caught in the red strands (commensalism). She made a note of it and moved on. Kay made her way across the river by jumping on the backs of resting nuglagymphs. The creatures groaned indignantly as their wide backs were tramped on. The vampiric reptiles nestled in between their scales continued to tear out plugs of flesh to ingest the blood (parasitism).
¨Sorry!¨ she said.
Now she´d reached the area called ¨tree-dotted plains¨. There were plains here, but the giant things dotting them weren´t really like trees. They were more like hairy, naked bulbs that stuck out from the ground. Upon closer inspection, small crustaceans could be seen darting in and out from holes in the bulbs. A tripedal creature with a proboscis approached one of the bulbs and proceeded to suck the fluids out of it before being devoured by a crustacean. She understood now. The shelled animals were provided with food and protection while simultaneously ridding their hosts of pests (mutualism).
She was stopped in her tracks by a wandering herd of unths. The enormous stout creatures passed by to graze. A straggler was having trouble keeping up. Its leg was broken. The unths scattered as a trio of smaller creatures lunged out from the undergrowth. They sank their teslons into the bellowing beast and began to feed after their quarry fell to the ground (predation).
