Holobionts: a new Paradigm to Understand the Role of Humankind in the Ecosystem

You are a holobiont, I am a holobiont, we are all holobionts.

"Holobiont" means, literally, "whole living creature." It is a concept known in biology at least from the 1930s, but that was rediscovered and diffused by Lynn Margulis in the 1990s, to emphasize how life is more than all a question of collaboration. Everything in life is an exchange of matter, energy, or information: holobionts are the building blocks of everything in the ecosystem, and also of human-made systems: families, companies, associations, markets, and more. The concept of holobiont gives us a new paradigm to rebuild our relationship with the ecosystem and with our fellow human beings.

Onward, fellow holobionts!

The Holobiont Explained. What it is, how it functions, how it came to exist

 

 

In this clip, I do my best to explain the concept of "Holobiont," popularized first by Lynn Margulis in 1999 with her book "Symbiotic Planet." It is a powerful concept to explain how we relate with our surroundings: the whole ecosystem and our fellow human beings. If we ever arrive to assimilate this idea into the general way of thinking, we have hope to stop the aggression on everything not human (or considered not human enough) and live in peace on this planet.