Symbiosis, History of

2016

Evol Biol

We distinguish between four cosmological transitions in the history of Western intellectual thought, and focus on how these cosmologies differentially define matter, space and time. We demonstrate that how time is conceptualized significantly impacts a cosmology's notion on causality, and hone in on how time is conceptualized differentially in modern physics and evolutionary biology. The former conflates time with space into a single spacetime continuum and focuses instead on the movement of matter, while the evolutionary sciences have a tradition to understand time as a given when they cartography how organisms change across generations over or in time, thereby proving the phenomenon of evolution. The gap becomes more fundamental when we take into account that phenomena studied by chrono-biologists demonstrate that numerous organisms, including humans, have evolved a "sense" of time. And micro-evolutionary/genetic, mesoevolutionary/developmental and macro-evolutionary phenomena including speciation and extinction not only occur by different evolutionary modes and at different rates, they are also timely phenomena that follow different periodicities. This article focusses on delineating the problem by finding its historical roots. We conclude that though time might be an obsolete concept for the physical sciences, it is crucial for the evolutionary sciences where evolution is defined as the change that biological individuals undergo in/over or through time.

Section: Natural History: the Consequences Of The Decimal Number Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modern Physics and Evolutionary Biology: The Problem Of Time And Non-linear Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time: The Biggest Pattern in Natural History Research

2016

Evol Biol

“…Symbiosis is a term introduced by de Bary [3] to designate the living in close association of "unlike-named organisms" [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Symbiosis refers to the phenomenon where two or more organisms with distinct genealogical, evolutionary histories either form conjunctive (morphologically connecting) or disjunctive (ecological) associations [30,31].…”

Section: Symbiosismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond the origin of eukaryotic cells, ontogenetically acquired endo-and ectosymbiotic relations provide genetic and phenotypic variation that can have metabolic, behavioral, and reproductive effects on both the host and the symbiont. Lichens are by far the model organisms that contributed to recognizing the importance of symbiosis as a fact of nature [25,44]. Lichens are composite organisms made up of a fungus host (sometimes called the mycobiont) that has algae and/or cyanobacteria as symbionts (called photobionts because they photosynthesize).…”

Section: Symbiosis and Symbiogenesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Today, numerous ecological symbiologists are applying philosophical and economic "public and common goods theory" [25,53] to try and make sense of the evolutionary principles brought forward by reticulately evolving organisms. Such "common goods" are properties or characteristics that are "carried" and brought forth by the reticulate interactions that require a more interactional and relational approach when they are defined.…”

Section: Extinctionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Testing the “(Neo-)Darwinian” Principles against Reticulate Evolution: How Variation, Adaptation, Heredity and Fitness, Constraints and Affordances, Speciation, and Extinction Surpass Organisms and Species

2020

Information

Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction form the building blocks of the (Neo-)Darwinian research program, and several of these have been called “Darwinian principles.” Here, we suggest that caution should be taken in calling these principles Darwinian because of the important role played by reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes in also bringing about these phenomena. Reticulate mechanisms and processes include symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity mediated by genetic and organismal mobility, and hybridization. Because the “Darwinian principles” are brought about by both vertical and reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes, they should be understood as foundational for a more pluralistic theory of evolution, one that surpasses the classic scope of the Modern and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Reticulate evolution moreover demonstrates that what conventional (Neo-)Darwinian theories treat as intra-species features of evolution frequently involve reticulate interactions between organisms from very different taxonomic categories. Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction therefore cannot be understood as “traits” or “properties” of genes, organisms, species, or ecosystems because the phenomena are irreducible to specific units and levels of an evolutionary hierarchy. Instead, these general principles of evolution need to be understood as common goods that come about through interactions between different units and levels of evolutionary hierarchies, and they are exherent rather than inherent properties of individuals.

Reticulate evolution underlies synergistic trait formation in human communities

Evolutionary Anthropology

Sukhoverkhov

2022

This paper investigates how reticulate evolution contributes to a better understanding of human sociocultural evolution in general, and community formation in particular. Reticulate evolution is evolution as it occurs by means of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. From these mechanisms and processes, we mainly zoom in on symbiosis and we investigate how it underlies the rise of (1) human, plant, animal, and machine interactions typical of agriculture, animal husbandry, farming, and industrialization;(2) diet-microbiome relationships; and (3) host-virome and other pathogen interactions that underlie human health and disease. We demonstrate that reticulate evolution necessitates an understanding of behavioral and cultural evolution at a community level, where reticulate causal processes underlie the rise of synergistic organizational traits.