Kingdom animalia: The zoological malaise from a microbial perspective

Pain and cognitive dissonance abounds amongst biologists: theplant-animal, botany-zoology wound has nearly healed and thenew gash—revealed by department and budget reorganizations—is"molecular" vs. "organismic" biology. Here I contend that resolutionof these tensions within zoology requires that an autopoietic-gaianview replace a mechanical-neodarwinian perspective; in the interestof brevity and since many points have been discussed elsewhere,rather than develop detailed arguments I must make staccatostatements and refer to a burgeoning literature. The first centralconcept is that animals, all organisms developing from blastularembryos, evolved from single protist cells that were unableto reproduce their undulipodia. The second points to the usefulnessof recognizing the analogy between cyclically established symbiosesand meiotic sexuality