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ANATOMIC MOSAICISM. "Anatomically, the individual animal is regarded as a structured whole. Yet, data from PCR show that the cells and bodies of animals are shared with numerous “species” of bacteria and other microbes. In some sponges, nearly 40% of the volume of the organism is comprised of bacteria, which contribute significantly to host metabolism." View in LinkedIn

EMERGENCE, SYNERGY AND EVOLUTION. "In evolutionary processes, causation is iterative; effects are also causes. And this is equally true of the synergistic effects produced by emergent systems. In other words, emergence itself... has been the underlying cause of the evolution of emergent phenomena in biological evolution; it is the synergies produced by organized systems that are the key." https://lnkd.in/dAmwzUd View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES. "What would biological science be if symbiosis were seen as the rule, not the exception? What scientific questions would become paramount and how might this change our view of life if intimate cooperation between species were a fundamental feature of evolution? What could “individual selection” mean if all organisms were chimeric, and there were no real monogenetic individuals?" View in LinkedIn

LIVING COMPOSITES. "We report here that the zoological sciences are also finding that animals are composites of many species living, developing, and evolving together. The discovery of symbiosis throughout the animal kingdom is fundamentally transforming the classical conception of an insular individuality into one in which interactive relationships among species blurs the boundaries of the organism and obscures the notion of essential identity." View in LinkedIn

BOTANISTS VERSUS ZOOLOGISTS. "In botanical science, the concept of the autonomous individual has also been challenged by discoveries concerning rhizobia, mycorrhizae, and endocytic fungae. Nonetheless, zoologists long subscribed to a more individualist conception of the organism, since the role of microbial symbionts had been more difficult to document in animal evolution." View in LinkedIn

SYMBIONT INHERITANCE. "This reorientation is not new for the microbial or botanical sciences. In the world of protists, hereditary symbiosis, the inheritance of acquired symbionts is legion. In the microbial world, “you are what you eat” can be taken literally." View in LinkedIn

NEW BLUEPRINT. "Recognizing the “holobiont”—the multicellular eukaryote plus its colonies of persistent symbionts—as a critically important unit of anatomy, development, physiology, immunology, and evolution opens up new investigative avenues and conceptually challenges the ways in which the biological subdisciplines have heretofore characterized living entities." View in LinkedIn

"SYMBIOSIS is becoming a core principle of contemporary biology, and it is replacing an essentialist conception of “individuality” with a conception congruent with the larger systems approach now pushing the life sciences in diverse directions. These findings lead us into directions that transcend the self/nonself, subject/object dichotomies that have characterized Western thought." View in LinkedIn

HOLOBIONT. "Symbionts also constitute a second mode of genetic inheritance, providing selectable genetic variation for natural selection. The immune system also develops, in part, in dialogue with symbionts and thereby functions as a mechanism for integrating microbes into the animal-cell community." View in LinkedIn

LOSS OF INDIVIDUALITY. "Animals cannot be considered individuals by anatomical or physiological criteria because a diversity of symbionts are both present and functional in completing metabolic pathways and serving other physiological functions. Similarly, these new studies have shown that animal development is incomplete without symbionts. View in LinkedIn