Symbiogenesis

"The tendency of 'independent' life
is to bind together and reemerge
in a new wholeness at a higher,
larger level of organization.

...

Living beings defy neat definition. They fight, they feed, they dance, they mate, they die. At the base of the creativity of all large familiar forms of life, symbiosis generates novelty. It brings together different life-forms, always for a reason. Often, hunger unites the predator with the prey or the mouth with the photosynthetic bacterium or algal victim. Symbiogenesis brings together unlike individuals to make large, more complex entities. Symbiogenetic life-forms are even more unlike than their unlikely 'parents.' 'Individuals' permanently merge and regulate their reproduction. They generate new populations that become multiunit symbiotic new individuals. These become 'new individuals' at larger, more inclusive levels of integration. Symbiosis is not a marginal or rare phenomenon. It is natural and common. We abide in a symbiotic world."

- Lynn Margulis (1938 - 2011)
Symbiotic Planet