Examples of facultative parasitism occur among many species of fungi, such as family members of the genus Armillaria.
Armillaria species do parasitise living trees, but if the tree dies, whether as a consequence of the fungal infection or not, the fungus continues to eat the wood without further need for parasitic activity; some species even can ingest dead wood without any parasitic activity at all.
[citation needed] Among animals, facultatively kleptoparasitic species generally can survive by hunting or scavenging for themselves, but it often is more profitable for them to rob food from other animals kleptoparasitically, whether their hosts are of the same species or not.
Such behavior occurs in lions and hyenas for example, and also among insects such as "Jackal flies" in the family Milichiidae.
More intimately, normally free-living microbes may opportunistically live as facultative parasites in other organisms.