Nature's Best Teams - Better Together

THE NUMBERS GAME

In pairs, guess each answer.

1. What percentage of the world's flowering plants depend on animals - bees, birds, bats - to reproduce?

2. In an Antarctic storm it feels like -40°C outside. How warm can it get inside a huddle of emperor penguins?

3. A lichen is two organisms living as one. How old are the oldest known lichens thought to be?

4. In Africa, a wild bird leads humans to bees' nests. How much more often do hunters find a nest with its help?

5. How many bees can live and work in a single colony at the height of summer?

HOW CLOSE WERE YOU?

1. Around 90% of flowering plants rely on animal pollinators.

2. Up to +37°C - body temperature - at the centre, while the edge freezes.

3. Several thousand years; some Arctic lichens are over 8,000 years old.

4. About three times more often (researchers in Mozambique).

5. Up to about 60,000 bees.

Which number surprised you most? Which partnership would you most like to see for real?

THE SCIENTIST'S DICTIONARY

Biologists have exact words for teamwork. Match the terms (1-6) with the definitions (a-f).

1. symbiosis

2. mutualism

3. parasitism

4. commensalism

5. division of labour

6. reciprocity

a) One organism benefits; the other is harmed.

b) The general term for two species living closely - good, bad or neutral.

c) One benefits; the other is neither helped nor harmed.

d) 'I help you now, you help me later.'

e) Both organisms benefit.

f) Different members specialise in different tasks.

Quick check: a mosquito and you? Bees and a flower? You and your dentist?

CASE FILES

Let's do some reading about some of these fascinating partnerships.

Student A: The Sentinels and Living As One

Student B: The Huddle and The Honeyguide.

As you read, think about your answers to the following questions

1. Who are the partners?

2. What does each side give?

3. What does each side get?

4. What could make it collapse?

The Sentinels

Meerkats live in the Kalahari Desert in groups of up to fifty. While the group digs for insects, one meerkat climbs to a high point and does no foraging at all. It simply watches. If an eagle or a jackal appears, the sentinel gives a sharp alarm call and the whole group vanishes underground. Sentinels take turns, and a meerkat on guard duty makes a soft, continuous peeping sound - the 'watchman's song' - so the others know, without looking up, that somebody is watching the sky. Guard duty looks like self-sacrifice, but sentinels are usually meerkats that have already eaten, and standing high means they often spot danger first. Even so, it only works because every adult takes a shift.

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Living As One

A lichen looks like a single organism - a crust of grey, orange or green on a rock - but it is a partnership so complete that the partners cannot easily be separated. A fungus provides the structure: it anchors the lichen, holds water and shields its partner from drying out. Inside lives an alga, which does what the fungus cannot: photosynthesis. The alga turns sunlight into sugar and feeds them both. Together they survive where almost nothing else can - bare rock, deserts, the Arctic - growing less than a millimetre a year, for thousands of years. Scientists long argued whether the fungus is really a partner or a farmer keeping the alga captive. Either way, neither would last alone.

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The Huddle

Male emperor penguins incubate their eggs through the Antarctic winter, balancing them on their feet for around two months while eating nothing at all. Alone, a penguin would freeze. Instead, thousands of males form a huddle, pressed so tightly that the temperature at the centre can reach body heat even as the wind outside is deadly. The huddle is not static: it moves in slow waves. Birds on the freezing windward edge shuffle along the outside and rejoin at the sheltered side, so everyone rotates through the warm centre and the cold edge. No penguin is in charge. The rotation emerges from thousands of small steps - each bird just trying to get warmer - and the result shares the cold fairly.

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The Honeyguide

In Mozambique, human honey-hunters and a wild bird called the greater honeyguide have worked together for generations - perhaps thousands of years. The bird knows where the bees' nests are but cannot open them. The humans can open them but struggle to find them. So the honeyguide flies from tree to tree, chattering, leading the hunters through the bush, and the hunters follow, answering with a special call passed from father to son. When researchers played this call, honeyguides were far more likely to appear and lead - they recognise it as an invitation to work. At the nest the humans take the honey and leave the wax, which the bird eats. Neither species trained the other; the partnership evolved on its own.

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COMPLETE THE FILE

Now work in pairs and fill the grid together.

Case

The partners

What each gives

What each gets

What could break it

A

Meerkats

B

Lichen

C

Penguins

D

Honeyguide

discuss

1. Which partnerships are within one species, and which cross the species barrier? Does that matter?

2. Which case is closest to last week's Definition A - 'people working together for a common goal'? Which stretches it furthest?

3. Lichen partners literally cannot separate. Is total interdependence the strongest kind of partnership - or the most dangerous?

4. The penguin huddle has no leader, yet it is perfectly fair. Can human teams work with no leader? Have you seen one that did?

5. The honeyguide bond is dying out as people buy shop honey. What human partnerships are fading for similar reasons?

animal idioms

English hides animals everywhere. Match the idioms (1-8) with their meanings (a-h).

1. a lone wolf

2. the pecking order

3. a dog-eat-dog world

4. the lion's share

5. top dog

6. a worker bee

7. herd mentality

8. to take someone under your wing

a) the informal hierarchy of status in a group

b) the biggest portion of something

c) a person who prefers to work and act alone

d) to protect and guide someone less experienced

e) the most powerful or successful person in a group

f) copying everyone else instead of thinking for yourself

g) a fiercely competitive world where people do anything to win

h) someone who does lots of routine work without recognition

OVER TO YOU

Are you more of a lone wolf or a worker bee? Has that changed over your career?

Where is the pecking order most visible where you live: work, family, somewhere else?

Who took you under their wing when you started out? Have you done it for anyone?

Is business really a dog-eat-dog world, or is that just something people say?

Can you think of recent herd mentality - in markets, media or fashion?

THE NATURE CONSULTANCY

Your company fixes human teamwork problems using only models from nature. Take one client, choose the best animal model (meerkats, lichen, penguins, honeyguide... or wolves, bees, ants) and prepare a 60-second pitch. Be ready to defend it - other groups may challenge you.

Client 1 A 10-person startup: both co-founders want to be CEO and the team is splitting into two camps.

Client 2 A hospital night shift: the nurses are exhausted, and the same few always get the worst hours because they never complain.

Client 3 A remote software team across six time zones: nobody shares information and everyone quietly duplicates each other's work.

Client 4 A football club with a brilliant striker who never passes: the team loses, but his statistics look wonderful.