Suárez Javier, Triviño Vanessa
LOGOS/BIAP, Department of Philosophy, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Egenis, The Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2020 Mar 4;11:187. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00187. eCollection 2020.
Contemporary biological research has suggested that some host-microbiome multispecies systems (referred to as "holobionts") can in certain circumstances evolve as unique biological individual, thus being a unit of selection in evolution. If this is so, then it is arguably the case that some biological adaptations have evolved at the level of the multispecies system, what we call . However, no research has yet been devoted to investigating their nature, or how these adaptations can be distinguished from adaptations at the species-level (genomic adaptations). In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the nature of hologenomic adaptations. By drawing on the case of the evolution of sanguivory diet in vampire bats, we argue that a trait constitutes a hologenomic adaptation when its evolution can only be explained if the holobiont is considered the biological individual that manifests this adaptation, while the bacterial taxa that bear the trait are only opportunistic beneficiaries of it. We then use the philosophical notions of and to explain the nature of this form of individuality and argue why it is special of holobionts. Overall, our paper illustrates how the use of philosophical concepts can illuminate scientific discussions, in the trend of what has recently been called metaphysics of biology.
当代生物学研究表明，一些宿主-微生物群落多物种系统（称为“全生物”）在某些情况下可以作为独特的生物个体进化，从而成为进化中的一个选择单位。如果真是这样，那么可以说一些生物适应性是在多物种系统层面进化而来的，即我们所说的……然而，尚未有研究致力于探究它们的本质，或者这些适应性如何与物种层面的适应性（基因组适应性）区分开来。在本文中，我们通过研究全基因组适应性的本质来填补这一空白。通过借鉴吸血蝙蝠吸血饮食进化的案例，我们认为，当一个性状的进化只有在将全生物视为表现出这种适应性的生物个体，而携带该性状的细菌类群只是其机会主义受益者时才能得到解释，那么这个性状就构成了一种全基因组适应性。然后，我们运用……的哲学概念来解释这种个体性形式的本质，并论证为什么它对全生物来说是特殊的。总体而言，我们的论文说明了在最近所谓的生物学形而上学的趋势下，哲学概念的运用如何能够阐明科学讨论。
