"Modern reef building coral colonies would
not exist at all without the eons-long association of zooxanthellae
and coral cells."
"How is this different from symbiosis?" Mike asks.
"It's a difference in viewpoint,
not a disagreement about what happens. From this view, the manifestation
of the coral colony on the sea floor is the result of the evolutionary
and present interaction between all the players that act out the form
of the living coral; zooxanthellae as well as the thirty or forty different
kinds of coral cells."
"But, as you said, the coral and
the zooxanthellae can - experimentally or under stress - exist for a
time as independent beings." Colin has evidently been giving this
some thought since he heard it the last time. "Also, they have
different sets of chromosomes and genes. This means they have a very
different evolution."
"Yes, that's true, up to a point.
The point when they became a united system - some 200 million years
ago. Since then, their merger resulted in the common evolution of the
existing species of corals. They retain their identity as individuals
in the merger, but the whole being only exists as the culmination of
their combined behavior integrated within their environmental domain." Several sets of eyes glaze over at this point.
"OK. Look, experimentally, a single
coral cell can survive isolated from the system, but all by itself it
is not a coral colony. And within each coral cell we find still smaller
individuals that can be kept alive experimentally - sub-structures of
the cell such as flagella, mitochondria, centrioles, and nuclei of the
modern coral cells. Each of these also has its own DNA memory systems,
separate from the others, and reacts as individual beings. But a single
nucleus is not a coral cell.
"The chloroplasts in the zooxanthellae
have a different DNA system from the flagellum, mitochondria, and nucleus
in the dinoflagellate cell. We don't have any mental problem seeing
a zooxanthellum cell or a coral cell as a little being even though each
one is a community of separate, smaller creatures acting as one larger
one. "
"In exactly the same way, the
coral colony is a complex manifestation of the synergetic interaction
of all of its components. It simply would not Be, it never would
have become or evolved, if not for the whole assembly of smaller
individuals - zooxanthellae and coral cells - all behaving as one larger
being, the coral colony. And, to carry the thought one layer further,
the huge tropical coral reefs would not exist if not for the whole assembly
of different species of corals and algae and fish and other sub-parts
of the behavioral system."
"But what's wrong with the concept
of symbiosis?" Colin demands.
"Why, nothing. There's nothing
wrong with the association being looked at as symbiosis, or as parasitism,
or as the coral farming the zooxanthellae. They all have merits and
each viewpoint also has limitations. Symbiosis ran into problems when
it turned out virtually every modern cell in every living multicellular
organism is a symbiotic relationship of proto-bacteria. It's usefulness
as a descriptive term becomes limited because the association applies
everywhere. Symbiosis, parasitism, or coral farming the zooxanthellae
all focus on the relationship between separate entities.
"In the new view, the focus is
on the manifestation of entities by relationships. It is a recognition
of the universallity of the relationship, and the existence of the so-called
separate entities as relationships themselves. A focus on the communications
between chloroplasts, mitochondria, nucloli, cilia organizing their
behavior - and their evolution - to create a new level of communications
as modern cells. A focus on the communications between coral cells and
zooxanthellae to become a still larger association. And it carries our
thinking further, linking together associations we ordinarily would
not be able to integrate into one logic system. We have always been
philosophically confused over the one and the many, the individual and
the collective, particles and waves and especially between mind and
matter. Our science grew up on duality and can't connect the two.
"From this new viewpoint, the
entire coral complex, is seen as a network of communicating behavior patterns, nested one within the other.
It extends seemlessly from the interactions of organic molecules creating
the cellular organelles, the communications of cellular organelles to
create the cell. The communications between cells to create the polyps,
the communications of the polyps all working together to create the
coral colonies, the coral colonies and all the associated reef fauna
and flora interacting to form the coral reef ecosystem. The focus is
on the intercommunications. The intercommunications manifest the so-called
individual beings."
"From this viewpoint, the whole
atoll here can be viewed as a single network of communications, a megabeast,
thousands of years old, manifested by the communications of all of its
sub-component behavior systems. The behavior of the individual fish
and turtles and crabs and clams and corals and sponges result in the
megabeast atoll and, at the same time, the megabeast atoll creature
dictates where each of the individuals will grow and what they will
do - just as the behavior of the whole assemblege of cells manifests
the coral colony, and the form of the whole coral colony dictates where
each cell will grow and what they will do.
"The beauty of this viewpoint
is the way it integrates the entire living system, from the nested behavior
of sub-atomic particles into atoms to the nested behavior of all living
parts of an ecosystem into a living sea. As a network of communications,
the system becomes more and more complex, it learns, it evolves."
The rain has stopped. Everyone is looking
blank. Damn. "Let's go see if there are any turtles," I suggest.
The team works its way through the island path to the eastern side and
we sit on the top of the beach and watch for sea turtles to come up
the beach to lay their eggs. Although we see some turtle-like shadows
in the water, none venture up onto the sand.
"Do you believe in God?" asks Mike as we walk along the beach. Mother Sea, give me strength.
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