Symbiosis is very interesting to learn because it can be found in the life of our domestic animals, even if we sure that we know everything about them. For example, in our house cat and dog “worked” together to take out food from the table. The dog was looking if people appearing in a corridor, the cat jumped up on the table, took food and dropped it to the floor. If it was successful, they ate it together, if somebody of us appeared, dog run out and it was a signal for the cat, she did the same.

In wild nature, we will see examples of complicated symbiosis, when absolutely different creatures help each other to survive.

Flowers attract insects, hummingbirds, other birds, and bats by the smell and give some juice; insects, birds, and bats serve as fertilizers for these flowers flying from one to another.

Some species of ants make their “apartments” inside a tree fungus, so fungus helps ants to survive, ants bring to fungus some nutrients which are the main factor of fungus surviving.

For successful memorizing of examples like this, the Game “Symbiosis” is proposed.

 

RULES

 

There are two sets, each includes 20 pairs of cards, each pair is an example of symbiosis.  When finished to cut pairs of cards, leader mix all cards from an orange set and give them out to participants. They need to find their pair trying to put their “key sides” together looking if they are matching or not (photo above) and by reading a text and trying to figure out is this creature’s behavior or needs are symbiotic with those that another creature has. When participants find their pairs, a leader must comment and tell more about these examples.

Comments can be completely different depending on the age of participants. And one more interesting thing – leader can give out a green set of these cards without “keys” and play with them for the second time. So participants will try to match cards by their content, and memorize everything much better.  Preparing and showing pictures that are representing mentioned examples would be very good after the matching game. It would be great if some local examples of plants’ symbiosis (for example, tree and mushrooms) will be found on the trail, so the leader can show it as well.