Biologists have taken the concept of organism largely for granted. However, advances in the study of chimerism, symbiosis, bacterial-eukaryote associations, and microbial behavior have prompted a redefinition of organisms as biological entities exhibiting low conflict and high cooperation among their parts. This expanded view identifies organisms in evolutionary time. However, the ecological processes, mechanisms, and traits that drive the formation of organisms remain poorly understood. Recognizing that organismality can be context dependent, we advocate elucidating the ecological contexts under which entities do or do not act as organisms. Here we develop a "contextual organismality" framework and provide examples of entities, such as honey bee colonies, tumors, and bacterial swarms, that can act as organisms under specific life history, resource, or other ecological circumstances. We suggest that context dependence may be a stepping stone to the development of increased organismal unification, as the most integrated biological entities generally show little context dependence. Recognizing that organismality is contextual can identify common patterns and testable hypotheses across different entities. The contextual organismality framework can illuminate timeless as well as pressing issues in biology, including topics as disparate as cancer emergence, genomic conflict, evolution of symbiosis, and the role of the microbiota in impacting host phenotype.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/622461 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Díaz-Muñoz, Samuel L., Boddy, Amy M., Dantas, Gautam, Waters, Christopher M., Bronstein, Judith L. |
| Contributors | Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and Department of Biology; New York University; New York New York 10003, Department of Psychology; Arizona State University; Tempe Arizona 85281, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology; Washington University School of Medicine; St. Louis Missouri 63110, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, 5180 Biomedical Physical Sciences; Michigan State University; East Lansing Michigan 48824, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; University of Arizona; Tucson Arizona 85721 |
| Publisher | WILEY-BLACKWELL |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2016 The Author(s). Evolution published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution. |
| Relation | http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/evo.13078 |
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