Red-billed oxpeckers feed almost exclusively on what they can collect from the skin of large African mammals. This includes ticks and other ectoparasites, but also dead skin and blood of the mammal. The attached image shows a red-billed oxpecker sitting on the back of a warthog with a tick in its bill. A recent study found that the depletion of African mammals due to habitat loss and hunting leads to declines in oxpeckers. Researchers were interested in whether the nature of the interaction between African mammals and oxpeckers was context-dependent. They compared the effect of removal of oxpeckers in two areas in which the number of ticks on the mammals differed. In area 2, stomach content data of oxpeckers showed they consumed ~400 ticks per day. Cows were infested experimentally with large numbers of tick larvae and then oxpeckers were introduced at different stages in the tick life cycle (larvae; nymph; adult). They counted the number of adult ticks that dropped off the experimental animals with and without exposure to birds. Their results are in the attached figure. Based on the experimental results, what type of interaction do oxpeckers have with cattle when ticks are at high density? (See attached graph) A) Commensalism B) Mutualism C) Parasitism
Red-billed oxpeckers feed almost exclusively on what they can collect from the skin of large African mammals. This includes ticks and other ectoparasites, but also dead skin and blood of the mammal. The attached image shows a red-billed oxpecker sitting on the back of a warthog with a tick in its bill. A recent study found that the depletion of African mammals due to habitat loss and hunting leads to declines in oxpeckers.
Researchers were interested in whether the nature of the interaction between African mammals and oxpeckers was context-dependent. They compared the effect of removal of oxpeckers in two areas in which the number of ticks on the mammals differed.
In area 2, stomach content data of oxpeckers showed they consumed ~400 ticks per day. Cows were infested experimentally with large numbers of tick larvae and then oxpeckers were introduced at different stages in the tick life cycle (larvae; nymph; adult). They counted the number of adult ticks that dropped off the experimental animals with and without exposure to birds. Their results are in the attached figure. Based on the experimental results, what type of interaction do oxpeckers have with cattle when ticks are at high density? (See attached graph)
A) Commensalism
B) Mutualism
C)
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