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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

OUR ABILITY TO PREDICT how any complex system reacts as it gains greater complexity is confounded in all systems by the phenomenon of emergence, or the development of unanticipated traits and phenomena. This is now well recognized in biological systems. Is it equally recognized in increasingly complex computing systems? View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this fragment that looks at a radical change in thinking in life sciences. No longer clear species built of individuals, but a continuum of creatures co-evolving. View in LinkedIn

ORGAN SIGNALS. "In numerous organisms, the development of particular organs is predicated on chemical signals from symbionts. For example, the ovaries of the parasitoid wasp, Asobara, undergo apoptosis if signals from their Wolbachia symbionts are lacking." View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL SELF-ORGANIZATION. "Self-organization can be defined as the formation of complex patterned structures from units of less complexity by local internal interactions, without referring to an external blueprint or template. These internal interactions typically form feedback loops, thereby conferring robustness to the system. Other common features found in self-organizing systems are nonlinearity, symmetry breaking and the emergence of patterns from stochastic fluctuations." https://lnkd.in/dPFe4e3 View in LinkedIn