SYMBIOSIS

Sometimes significant truths are hidden in plain sight.

You might be surprised to know that there are more parasites than free-living animals. Every free-living animal that has been carefully examined has had at least one animal that lives exclusively in, or on, the host. This fact alone, if borne out by continued studies, would make the number of animals living on other animals equal to the number of hosts. But in addition, most animals host much more than one other animal that are shared with, perhaps, numerous other hosts. So if there are a million free-living animal species, there must surely be at least a million other animals that live on them.

Of course, “parasite” may not be the correct word for all of these animals, but that is a semantic discussion, not relating to whether such animals exist in large numbers or not. I may discuss that very issue in a later essay.

Another group of animals that live exclusively in, or on, another living species are the pollinators. The biological connection between the flowering plants and pollinators is so strong that one simply would cease to exist without the other. The majority of flowering plants require an animal to move pollen from one flower or plant to another. But the pollinator requires the flower to supply pollen and/or nectar, absolutely essential to the pollinator’s survival. The two are entwined in an ecological dance that is absolute, and mutually dependent.

Approximately a quarter of a million plants, and three quarters of a million insects, has been described by scientists on the earth today. Together this accounts for fully two thirds of all known organisms on our planet. This is not an accident. These two groups are interdependent for food and reproductive services. There are literally thousands of partnerships between insects and plants. Most are fragile, many are very specific, and often they include third party arrangements. If one partner is lost or diminished, the others will also be lost or diminished. The world does not consist of species. The world consists of ecosystems and partnerships.

The German mycologist (fungus specialist) Heinrich Anton de Bary coined a term as long ago as the late 1800’s for these kinds of relationships: symbiosis. He defined them as “the living together of unlike organisms”. This term has been modified over the years to have slightly different meanings. But I think the original meaning captures a concept that has not been properly appreciated in scientific circles.

Important common phenomena are sometimes underappreciated, while the new, the esoteric or the scandalous captures our attention. In the years since Darwin, evolution has become a dominant scientific principle. “Survival of the fittest” is a common metaphor. But what if the “fittest” doesn’t mean the strongest, or fastest or best adept at hiding, or most prolific as is popularly thought? What if “fit” actually means the ones best at living together? There are literally million of examples that this might be the case. And the pollinators may be the best example we could study.

The study of symbiosis may be one of the true unifying principles of Biology, and one that could more productively be applied to human existence than the results of social Darwinism.