Viral DNA, Symbiosis and Being Nature Positive
We can all agree that humans must live in a “nature positive” way in order to continue to live well on this rare of all planets, one that sustains life. To assert the opposite, and deliberately live in a “nature negative” way, is to invite ecocide on a massive scale.
We can also all agree that the protection of biodiversity (the variety of life) is crucial to living in a nature positive way. However, the fact that the world (especially Australia) is still losing biodiversity at an alarming rate is an indication that we have indeed moved in the direction of a “nature negative” global culture.
To arrest the decline in biodiversity requires more than a focus of saving individual species or even whole ecosystems, it requires the application of leading-edge knowledge of symbiosis in bioscience.
While it is appreciated that in Nature, ‘everything is connected to everything else’, not many understand that it is the symbiotic bonds between unlike organisms that hold ecosystems together. For example, in coral reefs, the coral colony is formed by a relationship between many species of polyp and algae. If the mutualistic relationship between the algae and the polyp is disturbed by warming water or pollution, the algae is expelled from the polyp and the health of the reef declines or, in extreme circumstances, completely dies.
The symbiotic relationship of obligate mutualism in corals and algae is replicated in untold other relationships in life. Plant and fungus networks in forests (mycorrhizae) and the human gut and symbiont bacteria nexus (the gut microbiome) are just two such examples of mutually beneficial relationships between very different species. Even more profound discoveries have been made in the domain of endosymbiosis with the knowledge that chloroplasts in plants and mitochondria in complex animals are a union of different organisms forming new and inheritable structures.
A major reason why most human communities are continuing to move in a nature negative direction is the failure to understand and support symbiotic relationships in nature. That failure is connected to the fact that many of these relationships were simply invisible to normal human perception. With the extension of our visual sense in the form of microscopes, we can now see the micro-world and how it works. Our latest findings in this process of discovery include the surprising fact that retrovirus genetic material makes up 8-10% of the human genome and has been crucial for our evolutionary development, including the way the human embryo develops.
If we are to engage in a nature positive way with what remains of the biodiversity of the planet, especially in biodiverse continents such as Australia, then a way of thinking that incorporates the very best of symbiotic science is needed. In addition to the symbioscience and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), humans need the ethical and creative correlates that match that understanding. In other words, the anthropocentric thinking of the Anthropocene needs to be supplanted by symbiocentric thinking in the Symbiocene.
The Symbiocene is a meta-meme that is needed to guide our thinking into the future. To outline this future era or ‘cene’ is critical for the future of all humanity and most complex life on Earth. Before we can even think about being nature positive and creating a nature – based economy, or what I call the sumbonomy, first we must clarify the principles of symbiotic relationships within the rest of life.
