Millions of coral polyps form massive underwater reefs, but they couldn’t do it without symbiotic algae partners and the bacteria and viruses that live among them.
Corals embody a host of conundrums for the scientific thinker. How do we define an individual “coral”? Where does one organism begin and another end? What can corals teach us about other organisms where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Derek Skillings is the lead investigator on a $600,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a project titled “The Emergence and Evolution of Goal-Directed Behavior in Collective Entities.” It is the largest grant ever received by UNCG’s Department of Philosophy.
“A holobiont is a term for a host organism and all of the things that live inside of it and on it,” Dr. Skillings explains. “We used to think these weird things like corals, lichens, and maybe certain insects, which are amalgamations of symbioses, were the exception in nature. But now we are realizing no, actually, it’s probably everything. Everything is a holobiont.”
He points to the bacteria in our guts and on our skin, even the mitochondria in our cells, as evidence that humans – like coral – are holobionts.