2025/11/03 by Javier Suárez, Matthew H. Haber · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Academic Writing and Publishing #Publishing and Scholarly Communication #Reading and Literacy Development
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s13752-025-00515-6
Lineages are continuous lines of ancestry. This concept of lineage in biology may be applied to cells, organisms, species, and other entities. Yet, notice that there are important, implicit conceptual questions lurking here. What entities generate lineages? Cells and organisms are clear candidates, but what about entities like holobionts? Do lineages at different levels exhibit unique characters, and, if so, do those amount to a difference in kind or degree? If the former, is there still a meaningful unifying concept of lineage across biology? If the latter, how do these lineages at different levels relate to one another? In this topical collection, these and other conceptual questions about lineages are examined in light of recent empirical and theoretical work.