The relativity of Darwinian populations and the ecology of endosymbiosis

If there is a single discipline of science calling the basic concepts of biology into question, it is without doubt microbiology. Indeed, developments in microbiology have recently forced us to rethink such fundamental concepts as the organism, individual, and genome. In this paper I show how microo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology & philosophy 2016-09, Vol.31 (5), p.619-637
Main Author: Stencel, Adrian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Education
Evolutionary Biology
Genomes
Natural selection
Philosophy
Philosophy of Biology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:If there is a single discipline of science calling the basic concepts of biology into question, it is without doubt microbiology. Indeed, developments in microbiology have recently forced us to rethink such fundamental concepts as the organism, individual, and genome. In this paper I show how microorganisms are changing our understanding of natural aggregations and develop the concept of a Darwinian population to embrace these discoveries. I start by showing that it is hard to set the boundaries of a Darwinian population, and I suggest thinking of a Darwinian population as a relative property of a Darwinian individual. Then I argue, in contrast to the commonly held view, that Darwinian populations are multispecies units, and that in order to accept the multispecies account of Darwinian populations we have to separate fitness from natural selection. Finally, I show how all these ideas provide a theoretical framework leading to a more precise understanding of the ecology of endosymbiosis than is afforded by poetic metaphors such as ‘slavery’.
ISSN:0169-3867
1572-8404
DOI:10.1007/s10539-016-9531-5