symbiotic relationships
There are many interactions in the ocean that happens everyday between different marine species. Marine life often depend on each other to survive. The ecosystem works together in many ways, species interact in 3 main ways, mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism. Here are three different examples of species relationships.
Mutualism is beneficial for both species an example of mutualism is Sea Anemone and Clownfish. The sea anemone give the clownfish a home and when the it is eating the clownfish eats the leftovers. The clownfish benefits the sea anemone by fighting off predators. Parasitism is a species that is benefiting off its host but harming the species its benefiting off of, an example of parasitism is flatworms and ocean sunfish, also known as Mola mola. The flatworms attache to the fish and hurts it but the fish has a way to deal with the relationship, the sunfish lays upwards and the birds eat off the parasites on it like flatworms. Commensalism is when a specie is neither helping nor hurting its host. An example of commensalism is a whale and barnacle the whale isn't helped by the barnacle nor being hurt so the whale accepts it, the barnacle greatly benefits from the whale and gets an abundance of food from being attached to the whale. All three types of relationships are used by many different pairs of species in the ocean.