Without symbiosis, biologist Rowan Huber writes in his new book, our planet would be “just mud.” Symbiosis, simply put, is cooperation between different species, and life has flourished over billions of years not because of competition, but because of this cooperation. To many, this idea seems contradictory to everything we know about evolution. Certainly, Darwin emphasized the role of competition.However, as Hopper points out, Darwin also knew, of course, that “life... depends on other lives.” Plants and animals are “bound together by a web of complex relationships.”
Today this interconnectedness has become more apparent, and Hopper provides us with examples.What he calls “the simplest example of symbiosis” can be observed when you uproot any type of legume (such as beans and others) and notice the presence of small white balls on its roots. These root nodules grow in cooperation with bacteria called rhizobia, which extract nitrogen from the air and turn it into fertilizer. Without rhizobia, plants would not be able to grow.
