Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations

Geologic map of the Phantom Lake quadrangle, Carbon County, Wyoming

The Phantom Lake 7.5-minute quadrangle is in southeastern Carbon County near the western flank of Medicine Bow Mountains. Precambrian (Neoarchean–Paleoproterozoic) intrusive, metasedimentary, and metavolcanic units are exposed in the northern and south-central portions of the quadrangle, but are obscured by glacial tills and other Quaternary deposits elsewhere on the map. The map area is adjacent to the Cheyenne belt, a 1.7 billion year-old suture zone that influenced much of the mineralization within the Medicine Bows and many of the structural features on the Phantom Lake quadrangle. Whole-rock geochemistry, along with detrital and magmatic zircon geochronology analysis results are reported for the Browns Park Formation and many of the Precambrian formations. </p

Die gezielte Freisetzung genetisch veraenderter Organismen Oekologische Ueberlegungen und Empfehlungen

Copy held by FIZ Karlsruhe; available from UB/TIB Hannover / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLE2. ed.DEGerman