You Are Not Just One Individual

You are actually a walking colony of life called a holobiont. Your personal evolution is not defined by your DNA alone but by the massive, shifting community of microbes living inside and on you.

This theory suggests that humans and plants are essentially ecosystems rather than single organisms. Because your microbiome can change through new acquisitions or shifting populations, your genetic makeup is far more flexible than we once thought. This means your evolutionary journey is a collaborative process with the trillions of bacteria you carry. It effectively turns the classic view of a lone individual into a complex, mobile biological union.