Study
Die Erscheinung der Symbiose
de Bary, Anton
Karl J. Trübner, 1879
A lecture defining symbiosis as the living together of differently named organisms, and surveying the range of such associations — from those in which both partners appear to benefit to parasitism, treated as one case among them rather than as a separate category.
- Studied in
- Fungi, Algae, Plantae
- Sample size
- a lecture setting out the concept and its range
Associations between unlike organisms form a continuum of outcomes, and the fact of living together does not determine which outcome applies.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Symbiosis names the association itself, not its result for either party.
How NatureHQ reads it
The record that settles the most common misuse in this whole family of subjects. Symbiosis has never meant "both benefit" in the technical sense — it means living together, and parasitism is a kind of it. The popular narrowing is not a small imprecision: it makes "parasitic symbiosis" read as a contradiction when it is a standard category.
- A nineteenth-century lecture; the modern usage debate has continued since and is not settled by citing its origin.
- Some contemporary biologists do use symbiosis in the narrow mutualistic sense, and the disagreement is real.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Symbiosis
Symbiosis means organisms of different species living closely together. It does not mean both benefit — parasitism is a kind of symbiosis, and always has been in the technical sense.
Commensalism
Commensalism means one species gains and the other is unaffected — which requires showing an effect is absent. Most textbook examples have never been measured well enough to support that.
Published by: Public-domain scientific works
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