immediately answered “By cheating!”. Alex explained that it is successful cheating
which brings evolutionary victory rather than trying to win by level competition.
Anyone who watches young children playing a competitive game will notice this
rule in action because the children make continued efforts at bending the rules,
changing the rules, and just simply cheating. In terms of evolution, Alex told us that
examples of successful evolutionary cheating were learning to use oxygen at a time
when other species considered oxygen to be a metabolic waste product, and learning
how to just simply eat your competitors.
My goals in writing this essay are both to appreciate Alex’s instruction and to
provide examples which might help with understanding this philosophical perspective. The contributions that symbiotic microbial interactions have made to evolution
are numerous and their effects have been profound. I will consider the development
of aerobic respiration and add to that several other examples of microbial symbiosis
which have become fundamental. One of the rules which might be used to describe
symbiosis is the old expression “If you can’t beat them, join them”. I would create an
additional rule and state that “From mutualism to antibiosis, symbiotically speaking
all’s fair in love and war”.
The principle concept is that evolutionary success comes from gaining a biologically competitive advantage by having found a way to do something differently.
Once a successful means of cheating has been developed, then all of the other
competitors must either rebalance the competition by accomplishing something
that is equivalent or else the competitors will face a loss in the sense of becoming
marginalized and possibly extinct.
26.1.1 The Pathway Leading from Ingested Microbes
to Mitochondria and Chloroplasts
Mitochondria, which now are organelles, would have begun as engulfed aerobically
respiring bacteria that somehow were not digested. Those bacteria became biologically inherited as internal passengers, termed inherited endosymbionts, within the
descendants of their initial host cell. At that point, the host cell and its internal
passengers began a common biological destiny and they were subjected to evaluations of competitive fitness as a combined entity. This combination of host and
bacterial symbiont could have been perceived as cheating against the competition
and eventually evolution resulted in the inherited bacterial symbionts becoming
fixed organelles. The descendants of that first organism, whose inherited bacteria
were uniquely destined to become mitochondria, successfully bested their competitors so extensively that mitochondria now are ubiquitous in eukaryotic organisms.
Degli (2014) has presented a suggestion that methylotrophic proteobacteria could be
among the closest living relatives of the microbes that endosymbiotically became
mitochondria. Interestingly, in absence of oxygen, mitochondrial functioning seems
to no longer be retained (Yahalomi et al. 2020) and that also may be a way of trying a
546
C. J. Hurst
which brings evolutionary victory rather than trying to win by level competition.
Anyone who watches young children playing a competitive game will notice this
rule in action because the children make continued efforts at bending the rules,
changing the rules, and just simply cheating. In terms of evolution, Alex told us that
examples of successful evolutionary cheating were learning to use oxygen at a time
when other species considered oxygen to be a metabolic waste product, and learning
how to just simply eat your competitors.
My goals in writing this essay are both to appreciate Alex’s instruction and to
provide examples which might help with understanding this philosophical perspective. The contributions that symbiotic microbial interactions have made to evolution
are numerous and their effects have been profound. I will consider the development
of aerobic respiration and add to that several other examples of microbial symbiosis
which have become fundamental. One of the rules which might be used to describe
symbiosis is the old expression “If you can’t beat them, join them”. I would create an
additional rule and state that “From mutualism to antibiosis, symbiotically speaking
all’s fair in love and war”.
The principle concept is that evolutionary success comes from gaining a biologically competitive advantage by having found a way to do something differently.
Once a successful means of cheating has been developed, then all of the other
competitors must either rebalance the competition by accomplishing something
that is equivalent or else the competitors will face a loss in the sense of becoming
marginalized and possibly extinct.
26.1.1 The Pathway Leading from Ingested Microbes
to Mitochondria and Chloroplasts
Mitochondria, which now are organelles, would have begun as engulfed aerobically
respiring bacteria that somehow were not digested. Those bacteria became biologically inherited as internal passengers, termed inherited endosymbionts, within the
descendants of their initial host cell. At that point, the host cell and its internal
passengers began a common biological destiny and they were subjected to evaluations of competitive fitness as a combined entity. This combination of host and
bacterial symbiont could have been perceived as cheating against the competition
and eventually evolution resulted in the inherited bacterial symbionts becoming
fixed organelles. The descendants of that first organism, whose inherited bacteria
were uniquely destined to become mitochondria, successfully bested their competitors so extensively that mitochondria now are ubiquitous in eukaryotic organisms.
Degli (2014) has presented a suggestion that methylotrophic proteobacteria could be
among the closest living relatives of the microbes that endosymbiotically became
mitochondria. Interestingly, in absence of oxygen, mitochondrial functioning seems
to no longer be retained (Yahalomi et al. 2020) and that also may be a way of trying a
546
C. J. Hurst