Events

KLI Colloquia are invited research talks of about an hour followed by 30 min discussion. The talks are held in English, open to the public, and offered in hybrid format. 

 

Fall-Winter 2025-2026 KLI Colloquium Series

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923

 

25 Sept 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

A Dynamic Canvas Model of Butterfly and Moth Color Patterns

Richard Gawne (Nevada State Museum)

 

14 Oct 2025 (Tues) 3-4:30 PM CET

Vienna, the Laboratory of Modernity

Richard Cockett (The Economist)

 

23 Oct 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

How Darwinian is Darwinian Enough? The Case of Evolution and the Origins of Life

Ludo Schoenmakers (KLI)

 

6 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Common Knowledge Considered as Cause and Effect of Behavioral Modernity

Ronald Planer (University of Wollongong)

 

20 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Rates of Evolution, Time Scaling, and the Decoupling of Micro- and Macroevolution

Thomas Hansen (University of Oslo)

 

4 Dec (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Chance, Necessity, and the Evolution of Evolvability

Cristina Villegas (KLI)

 

8 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations

Enrico Petracca (KLI)

 

15 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty

Patricia Beldade (Lisbon University)

 

29 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

O Theory Where Art Thou? The Changing Role of Theory in Theoretical Biology in the 20th Century and Beyond

Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)

Event Details

Lynn Chiu
KLI Colloquia
Microorganisms as Scaffolds of Host Individuality
Lynn CHIU (University of Bordeaux/CNRS)
2016-11-24 11:30 - 2016-11-24 13:00
KLI
Organized by KLI

Topic description:
There is currently a great debate about whether the holobiont, i.e. a multicellular host and its residential microorganisms, constitutes a biological individual. We propose that resident microorganisms have a general and important role in the individuality of the host organism, not the holobiont. Drawing upon the Equilibrium Model of Immunity (Eberl 2016), we argue that microorganisms are scaffolds of immune capacities and processes that determine the constituency and persistence of the host organism. A scaffolding perspective accommodates the contingency and heterogeneity of resident microorganisms while accounting for their necessity and unifying contributions to host individuality. In our symbiotic view of life, holobionts may not be organisms or units of selection, but macroorganisms cannot persist nor function without their scaffolding microorganisms.

 

Biographical note:
Lynn Chiu is a philosopher of biology and science working as a postdoc researcher at the ImmunoConcept Lab of University of Bordeaux/CNRS, funded by the ERC Starting Grant “Immunity, DEvelopment and the Microbiota (IDEM): Understanding the Continuous Construction of Biological Identity” (PI: Thomas Pradeu). Her current work is on the construction of biological individuals at the intersection of host-microorganism interactions. She earned her PhD in philosophy at the University of Missouri–Columbia in December 2015. Her dissertation concerned the challenges niche construction and ecological developmental biology bring to dispositional accounts of fitness and adaptationism.

https://lynnchiu.me/