Beyond society: the evolution of organismality
Open accessAbstract
The evolution of organismality is a social process. All organisms originated from groups of simpler units that now show high cooperation among the parts and are nearly free of conflicts. We suggest that this near-unanimous cooperation be taken as the defining trait of organisms. Consistency then requires that we accept some unconventional organisms, including some social insect colonies, some microbial groups and viruses, a few sexual partnerships and a number of mutualistic associations. Whether we call these organisms or not, a major task is to explain such cooperative entities, and our survey suggests that many of the traits commonly used to define organisms are not essential. These non-essential traits include physical contiguity, indivisibility, clonality or high relatedness, development from a single cell, short-term and long-term genetic cotransmission, germ–soma separation and membership in the same species.
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There is a range of possible MC levels of complexity between strict unicellularity and bona fide multicellular organisms.
“There is a range of possible MC levels of complexity between strict unicellularity and bona fide multicellular organisms [188].”
From Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems (2024) · cites this paper as [188]
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- Authors
- Queller, D. C., & Strassmann, J. E.
- Affiliations
- Rice University (US)
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2009-11-12
- Volume
- 364
- Issue
- 1533
- Pages
- 3143-3155
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC2781869
- OpenAlex
- W2139279489
- Cited by
- 440
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 48 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 29 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 90.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0816690, 0328455)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Keywords
- evolution of organisms, social insects, microbial consortia, viruses, mutualism, clonality, species membership, indivisibility
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cultural Evolution, Humans, Social Behavior
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