The fungus could almost be said to ‘farm’ captured crops of photosynthesisers. The metaphor gains from the fact that in some lichens the partnership is largely cooperative, and in others the fungus is more exploitative. Evolutionary theory predicts that the lichens in which the reproduction of the fungus and the photosynthesiser go hand-in-hand generally form cooperative relationships. Lichens in which the fungus just captures available photosynthetic organisms from the environment are predicted to have more exploitative relationships.
