"We are always connected in one way or another to everything else."

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"Living beings resist precise definition. They struggle, feed, dance, mate, and die. At the root of the creativity behind all great forms of familiar life, symbiosis generates novelty. It brings together different life forms, always for a reason. Hunger often links predator to prey or a mouth to photosynthetic bacteria or algae victims.

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Symbiogenesis unites different individuals to create larger and more complex entities. Symbiogenic life forms would be even more improbable than their already unlikely 'progenitors.' These 'individuals' merge permanently and regulate their reproduction. They generate new populations that become new symbiotic multi-unit individuals, which in turn become 'new individuals' at broader and more inclusive levels of integration.

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Symbiosis is neither a marginal nor a rare phenomenon. It is natural and common. We inhabit a symbiotic world.”

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—Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet