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Mutualisms and Insect Conservation pp 167–192Cite as

Exploiters of Mutualisms

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Abstract

All mutualisms are, in principle, prone to invasion and exploitation by other species that seek reward without conferring any benefits in return. Those species are most frequently native taxa, some with long coadapted relationships with the mutualists, but additional impacts may occur from invasive alien species as a further aspect of the disruptions they may cause. The impacts of additional species in a mutualism raise important questions, perhaps the most relevant being to address the implications arising from them removing the reward that a mutualist offers to its partner as a central component of the mutualistic interaction. The primary associations between mutualists provide opportunities for many other species to either exploit the interaction in some way, or to derive some benefits through looser, but regular and predictable, co-occurrence.

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  1. Department of Ecology, Environment & Evolution, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Tim R. New

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New, T.R. (2017). Exploiters of Mutualisms. In: Mutualisms and Insect Conservation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58292-4_9

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