Obligate

obligate (adj.; opposite: facultative) – required, necessary, essential; confined to and intricately dependent on a particular host, symbiont, substratum, or mode of nutrition. For example, it may be possible to culture a mycobiont that was isolated from a lichen symbiosis. However, in nature most mycobionts will not survive independently from the lichen symbiosis. They are therefore obligatory lichenized.

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