Are we part of a holobiont? (7/29/2023)

If you haven’t been living in a hole in the ground, you must have heard about the word or concept called microbiome. Microbiome is defined as the community of microorganisms that exists in a particular environment. These can include fungi, bacteria, other singular cellular organisms and even viruses. When we look at us humans these are our gut bacteria and everything else that is down or better in there. Moreover, it seems that even our hands, our body and every other part of our body have a unique microbiome. The microbiome on our left hand might even differ from that on our right hand. Being a baker, I listened to a podcast on sourdough breads and it seems that every sourdough baker has a microbiome on their hands that is unique to the sourdough starter they use.

The microbiome seems to be responsible for a lot of things in our life including gut health; our resistance to diseases; dementia at older age; and even our mental health. It appears we have more (micro)organisms in our gut microbiome than cells in our body. We are what is considered by some scientists a holobiont.

A holobiont is defined as an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit. In other words, we as individual humans and our microbiome together are holobionts. There is still some controversy about this concept of holobiont and even my spell checker does not know the word yet.

What medical science is slowly telling us is that if our microbiome is off, we get in all kinds of trouble. The simple issue maybe diarrhea or other stomach upset. It may include weight loss or conversely in folks who suffer from obesity. As I mentioned above, it seems that Alzheimer can even be linked to our microbiome being out of balance, or at least it can excel the mental decline or onset of dementia in some. We can change our microbiome with the food we eat, and this is where the concept of not “not every calorie is the same” comes from. We are hopefully also all learning about probiotics (fermented foods rule), prebiotics, and now even post-biotics. All parts of a healthy nutrition that is good for gut health. Folks with CDIF (or Clostridium difficilus), a very virulent bacterial infection may even require a fecal or poop transplant to get a healthy microbiome from someone else implanted in their gut. Which might be the only way to shake this disease.

Anyway, I want to stop here, and write more about the concept of holobiont. This idea, an assemblage of a host and other species living together in some form of harmony is interesting to me and to a lot of scientists. I think this is what makes it so darn controversial. One of the reasons is that if we look at it on a large scale, we can look at an island or even the Earth as a holobiont as well, and that everything living on this earth are part of that assemblage. Ah, we are quickly entering the world of Gaia and I think this is where the whole concept of holobiont runs into trouble. Gaia is more metaphysical; it seems to be more the believe in the divine personification of the Earth and the matriarch of all things in existence. Modern pagans believe Gaia is the Earth and she is the spiritual embodiment of the Earth. In other words, scientist that consider the Earth a holobiont are skating on thin ice and can be accused of being pagans or some other form of religious heretics.

However, the concept is an interesting one. Like our gut with diarrhea, the earth can also get or be out of balance when the assemblage of species gets out of balance. An interesting concept isn’t it? It is somewhat Malthusian, but I am beginning to believe that we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth; the carrying capacity is the number of individual humans the earth can safely handle before things go awry. In my eyes, we humans could be considered the E. coli of even CDIF of the Earth. There are just too many of us, and the Earth is sick! That is what I think we are seeing, global warming, the weather is going bonkers; everything seems out of balance. Even today there was a report that the gulf stream that keeps western Europe warm may be diminishing and put Europe in an eventual deep freeze. Strange days indeed! Have we reached the point of no return? I don’t know, only time will tell.

During our hike last week we encountered communities like this.  Although not a holobiont, the lichen on the rock are a perfect union of algae and fungi living together in perfect harmony.  In addition I just loved the community of plants.  This was in Grayson Highland State Park. 

 

No, it does not have to be perfect (10/13/2017)

Wow, two posts so close together!  But I felt I owe you one.  I have been on political and environmental rants or soap boxes lately and need to get off it; although today's post started out from lots of anxieties including a lot of political ones.  Rest assured, I will not go into them.

Working from home today, I needed my "smoking" or maybe I should call it my "socialization" break (I don't smoke).  I had just pulled up a few websites and all kinds of news items stared me in the face, and then my arm buzzed.  "Ready to take me for a stroll?" my Fitbit asked me?  That darn thing has a feature that reminds me every hour at 10 minutes before the hour that I need to get my 250 steps in that hour.  At least it does that when I sit on my ass that entire hour.  So as any good slave to their activity tracker does, I obliged.

Being a student of "forest bathing" and, as I already mentioned, not in the best of mental shapes this morning, I go for broke.  What the hell, I think let's just go for a little stroll out back on the path in the woods behind our home, and ignore all the ticks and potential chiggers.  I need to forest bathe!  Somehow the dogs also think they should forest bathe.

On the forest trail behind our home.

This is partially a serious and a not so serious post, so let's get the not so serious one out of the way.  We do not put our dogs on the leash in this area (don't tell the park rangers, please!), it is behind our house, there is never anyone there and I was only going out for 10 minutes.  Our beagle Lucy started eating grass all the way; in other words it was slow going.  This would have been fine, I wanted to forest bathe, and really relax.  However, this is fairly difficult with a loudly gagging dog behind you on the trail, disturbing the peace and quiet of the woods.  So I just walked a little faster, figuring out she knew where I was going.  I also wanted to stop on the way to take some photos and take in nature, so I was planning to go slow anyway.  This confused our other dog Jake somewhat: "aren't we waiting for Lucy?"

At least I got my forest bathing in, the smells and the sounds were great (with the exception of the occasional gagging behind me in the distance).  We've had a wet couple of days; it actually rained over 3 inches two days ago, so I expected a wet mess.  To my surprise it wasn't: the pond behind our home was still dry.  These (Grafton) ponds are groundwater fed and we've had a dry fall, so I am not that surprised.  

As you can see this pond is still dry despite all the rain we had the last couple of days.

It was just nice to slowly walk the trail, to smell nature, to observe the beauty and come to my senses.  Taking photos helps me see things more clearly.  The photographs do not need to be perfect it is just fun, it makes you slow down, look around and observe.  Get out there and do it.  Like my walk today, it was not perfect, but it was what I needed.  I would not want to change it for anything else.

The lichen on this tree grow on the north side of the tree that is mostly in the shade.  the south side has no lichen growing, probably because it is too hot and dry from the sun beating on it.

This oak had beautiful sloughing bark.  When I was living and working in the mid-West this was of great interest to us because this was where the endangered Indiana bat live under during the summer months. 

  

I just loved the seeds (nuts) of this sedge and how they hung like that.

And yes, even this post does not have to be perfect!

Draper (3/4/2015)

On the road again! After a month and a half hiatus I am on the road teaching again. Actually two weeks ago it was Fairfax, but I really had not much to say. But it are days like today that I have to vent, after four to five hours in a car, listening to the radio. It is amazing what you get to hear while trying to stay entertained and allert while driving. I really needed to decompress in Draper and walk a piece of the New River Trail.

What got me upset? Don't get me wrong, I love the mountains of Virginia and the people that live here. Yes, the number of tea party license plates are higher here in them hills, but to each there own. What upset me was listening to the radio. There were programs that were all over the place. I understand religeous broadcasts and money shows etc, but some more conservative radio hosts were absolutely virulent and vitreous. Now I am from European stock, and my father spent time in a German concentration camp; and from what I understand from stories have heard and read, this is very remeniscant of what Germany went through. The hatred of liberals and the name calling was absolutely amazing. Hopefully only a small minority listen and or agree with these demagogues, but yes it is remeniscant of some of the Hitler news reals I have seen; although it is not anti Jewish, but anti Muslim and anti liberal. It was absolutely flabbergasting, and I needed to decompress; like showering after getting really dirty.

Walking the New River Trail I saw trees covered with lichen and it symbolizes my feelings after the name calling and hatred. I wrote about lichens in a previous post, but I need to bring it back.

While lichen may look like moss, they actually consists of two different lifeforms. They are algae that live on (together with) a fungus. These two lifeforms live in a symbiotic relationship (they scratch each other's back and don't live separately) something that these bizarre fashist radio hosts cannot do with people that don't agree with them or when they are Muslim. In addition to helping each other, lichen are also food to animals and the may protect trees and soil from temperature extremes.

We are such a self destructive species that hates and kills our own species, something that most other species do not do, let alone live in a truly symbiotic relationship with others. It really amazes me how much hate there is in this world.

Yorktown (12/23/2014)

It is really nice to be outside in the woods early in the morning after a day of rain or when it is foggy.  Today it was both.  All the trees were still damp, which makes the bark turn really dark and makes the lichen and moss stand out.

Lichen are very interesting organisms.  They actually are a symbiotic relationship ship (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours) of algae, bacteria and fungi.  Somehow by living together they are able to create these wonderfully colored structures that live on rock, and in our woods on the trunks of trees.  This symbiotic relationship makes them strong and able to live under very harsh conditions.  Typically they live on the northern sides of trees and rocks, where they are not baked by the sun.

Here is a picture I took today during my walk this morning.  It was great to be out in the woods again.  Life is still dry, the ponds have no or very little water in them; but regardless it is so enjoyable walking in the woods.  Foggy day walks are my favorite.