Symbiosis in Olympic National Park
There are several examples of symbiotic relationships in Olympic National Park. One is the wood boring beetle. It is a parasite, that means the beetle wins, and its host the tree, loses. These beetles are bad for any living tree because they eat around the tree tissue and cause it to die. Another thing they do is they lay their eggs in the tree and that makes it hard to get water and nutrients up to the tippy tops of the trees. Another example of a symbiotic relationship in the park is the Big Leaf Maple and Epiphytes. What is an epiphyte? An epiphyte is a plant that grows on a tree like mosses, ferns, spike mosses, liverworts and lichens. The plant and their roots never touch the ground. In Olympic they are most likely to grow on the branches and trunks of the Big Leaf Maple. They get their water by soaking it up in soft plant tissues. They are not a parasite. But, we are not sure if it is a mutual relationship or a commensalism relationship.