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. 2016 Oct 27;70(12):2669–2677. doi: 10.1111/evo.13078

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© 2016 The Author(s). Evolution published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Examples of biological entities that show contextual organismality. Panel (A) shows an illustration of adult M. sexta hawkmoths collecting nectar and aiding pollination at D. wrightii plants and juvenile hawkmoths preying on Datura leaves. Insets show photographs of each stage. Panel (B) shows individual planktonic Vibrio bacterial cells moving independently (upper image) and a large number of Vibrio cells that communicate and coordinate secretions to create a biofilm (lower image). Image credits: Panel (A) main: Julie Johnson http://www.lifesciencestudios.com, Panel (A) insets: Robert Raguso and Judith L. Bronstein, Panel (B): Christopher M. Waters.