If there is a single discipline of science calling the basic concepts of biology into question, it is without doubt microbiology. Indeed, developments in microbiology have recently forced us to rethink such fundamental concepts as the organism, individual, and genome. In this paper I show how microorganisms are changing our understanding of natural aggregations and develop the concept of a Darwinian population to embrace these discoveries. I start by showing that it is hard to set the boundaries of a Darwinian population, and I suggest thinking of a Darwinian population as a relative property of a Darwinian individual. Then I argue, in contrast to the commonly held view, that Darwinian populations are multispecies units, and that in order to accept the multispecies account of Darwinian populations we have to separate fitness from natural selection. Finally, I show how all these ideas provide a theoretical framework leading to a more precise understanding of the ecology of endosymbiosis than is afforded by poetic metaphors such as ‘slavery’.

中文翻译：

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达尔文种群的相对性与内共生生态学

如果有一门学科质疑生物学的基本概念，那毫无疑问是微生物学。事实上，微生物学的发展最近迫使我们重新思考有机体、个体和基因组等基本概念。在本文中，我展示了微生物如何改变我们对自然聚集的理解，并发展达尔文种群的概念来接受这些发现。我首先表明很难设定达尔文人口的界限，我建议将达尔文人口视为达尔文个体的相对属性。然后我认为，与普遍持有的观点相反，达尔文种群是多物种单位，为了接受达尔文种群的多物种解释，我们必须将适应度与自然选择分开。