Lockdown is always a good time for a little reflection on life and the world at large. Apart from procrastinating about work and wondering how to make chocolate microwave mud cakes, lockdown has a way of making us all stop and think about the circumstances we find ourselves in.
I have always described Falls Creek Race Club as having a symbiotic relationship with the Lift Company and Resort Management that is mutually beneficial. Symbiosis is a term describing any relationship or interaction between two dissimilar organisms. The specific kind of symbiosis depends on the type of relationship the organisms engage in.
I was thinking about the nature of symbiotic relationships this afternoon as I was walking my dog and reflecting on the past week’s conversations. My brain kept coming back to the analogy of Falls Creek as a symbiotic marine ecosystem.
According to National Geographic, there are five main symbiotic relationships: mutualism, commensalism, predation, parasitism, and competition. Depending on who you are talking to at the time, three of these relationships provide the foundations upon which our lovely little village rests.
To paraphrase the National Geographic article “Symbiosis: The Art of Living Together.” To explore these relationships, let’s consider Falls Creek as a natural ecosystem and compare it to the ocean. Oceanic environments are known for their species diversity.
If we were swimming in the warm waters of the Pacific or Indian Oceans instead of sitting inside watching more snow fall, we’d perhaps see an excellent example of mutualism: the relationship between clownfish and sea anemones. In a mutualistic relationship, both species benefit.
As we dive deeper into our imaginary tour of the ocean, we could observe the commensalistic relationship that exists between barnacles and humpback whales. Commensalism happens when one species lives with, on, or in another species, known as the host. The host species neither benefits nor is harmed from the relationship.
Of course, some symbiotic relationships do cause harm. In predation, one species (the predator) hunts and kills another species (the prey). One of the better studied predators in the oceans is the orca, or killer whale.
Another harmful relationship is parasitism. This happens when one species (the parasite) lives with, on, or in a host species, at the expense of the host species. Unlike in predation, the host is not immediately killed by the parasite, though it may sicken and die over time. Examples of common parasites found in the ocean include nematodes, leeches, and barnacles.
The last example of symbiosis we will explore on our fictional expedition is competition - the struggle among organisms for the same limited resources in an ecosystem. Competition can happen between members of the same species (intraspecific competition) and between different species (interspecific competition). An example of interspecific competition in the ocean is the relationship between corals and sponges. Sponges are very abundant in coral reefs. If they become too successful, however, they take needed food and other resources from the corals that make up the reef. Sponges may out-compete corals for resources in the short term, but if too many corals die, the reef itself becomes damaged. This is bad for the sponges, which may themselves begin to die off until the reef is balanced again.
Symbiotic relationships can be useful measures of an ecosystem’s health. So what point am I getting at in this marine biology lesson up in the Victorian Alps, during lockdown?
We all exist in the Falls Creek ecosystem together, at the same time. Our symbiotic relationships, immaterial of the types, binds us together irrelevant of whether you are a tourist who has dropped $5 on a one-off take away coffee or stakeholders who have multiple million dollars invested in a club or business.
Some of these relationships have evolved over long periods of time, in some instances over decades as stakeholders have leased land from what we now call Resort Management and established businesses and clubs. Some relationships are fresher, as clubs and business are bought and sold as stakeholders evolve through their phases of life, moving onto and eventually off the hill as want, desire, energy and cash flow necessitates.
During lockdown and, let’s be honest, sometimes out of lockdown, we have all seen how easy it is for moral outrage to take hold and for venom to spew forth at those some feel have done them wrong or at the situation we all find ourselves in. We see it every day on social media. It’s a very human and understandable response, especially when under stress and strain, but also upsetting for those on the receiving end of it. It’s easy for us to miscategorise a symbiotic relationship from positive to negative when we are swimming against the ocean’s rip.
When I think about what I love about Falls Creek, I think of the mutualistic, commensalistic and competitive relationships that make up this little slice of snowy heaven. None of us can exist without the other. We all have a purpose on the hill. Take away one relationship and we become unbalanced, and the subsequent loss of symbiosis impacts the health of all those remaining.
So, while we wait another seven days (at the time of writing) for news of release from lockdown, and dream of waking to the sound of lifts turning and the Black Jackets de-icing the chair towers, let’s think about what relationships we want to be in. Personally, I want to be clownfish living in a sea anemone. Be safe and be kind to yourselves. •
Cheers, Nyree Fiddes
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/symbiosis-art-living-together/