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One is lead to a conclusion that the biomass of all eukaryotes is in actuality a single planetary species, with local adaptations; that our insistence on imposing characterizations and order on the microbiological world are folly.

symbiogenesis

Yes, the history of life on this planet does demonstrate that species is a somewhat arbitrary division of a continuum of organisms. However, the ability to recognise a species has some evolutionary usefulness; how else are we going to recognise poisonous plants or dangerous animals.

I hate to write (obviously)but this article needs an overview of the symbiogenesis of the proto-eucaryote and of the various eubacteria that originated both the mitochondria in modern eucaryotes and the chloroplasts in plants, algae, diatoms etc.

There also should be a review of the repeated endosymbioses that led to the various diatoms and dinoflagellates. -anon

Those things are dealt with in a separate article, endosymbiotic hypothesis. This article is extremely biased towards Margulis' point of view, which is extremely idiosyncratic, and more importantly ignores the bulk of the evidence. It's true that symbiogenesis is responsible for some of the main eukaryotic lineages, but this idea is hardly specific to Margulis. As such, I really can't see how the espousal of her theory can be made NPOV, and have replaced it with a brief summary of her opinion. I think this page would be better as a redirect. Josh

Hang on, don't give up on this article just yet! As written, it is a rather poor example of how to write NPOV and doesn't really discuss symbiogenesis, but the topic deserves a place in this encyclopedia. Friedgreenkillertomatoes 09:23, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the current contents of this article are more appropriate for a article that explains of the work of Margulis (in a rather biased manner) then Symbiogenesis. Dr v 06:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think someone is mis-citing Mereschkowsky here. The 1927 book "Symbionticism and the Origin of Species" was written by Ivan Emmanuael Wallin. Mereschkowsky's article was published in 1909 in Russian. The title can be translated as "The theory of two plasms as a foundation of symbiogenesis: new knowledge concerning the origins of organisms". If I wasn't connected via HughesNet (which won't let me login to wikipedia), I'd edit the page directly. -bhawthorne —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.19.14.20 (talk) 04:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Other than the two examples of mitochondria and chloroplasts, there is no clear evidence of other major traits or transitions that can be attributed to symbiogenesis." What about siphonophores? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.200.214.95 (talk) 07:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding this sentence at the end of the first paragraph: "Today both chloroplasts and mitochondria are believed, by those who ascribe to the endosymbiotic theory, to have such an origin." From the first time I first heard of endosymbiosis in high school, through 4 years of biology classes in college, and continuing through the past ~4 years working on a phd in a lab that studies evolutionary theory, I have never met nor heard of anyone who did NOT "ascribe to the endosymbiotic theory" as it applies to chloroplasts and mitochondria. In my experience it's something that the scientific community accepts as true. (Obviously it's a question that can never be PROVEN as true, but I can't think of any such question with an explanatory theory as parsimonious as endosymbiosis is for the question of origins of mitochondria/chloroplasts.) My point here is that the sentence I quoted seems deliberately structured to suggest that this question is one of significant disagreement, with endosymbiosis just one among multiple competing explanations, each with its share of "believers." It's also possible that whoever wrote the sentence that way just did it to shoehorn in a link to "endosymbiotic theory," but either way I feel like the concept of endosymbiosis is already very hard to buy - a textbook "extraordinary claim" - when someone first hears of it, before understanding the body of evidence supporting it. The implication that some significant fraction of experts don't "believe" it either also implies that the evidence must not be extraordinary enough, so it's not worth trying to understand. It is. Sorry for making way too big a deal about that, I'm very tired and forcing myself when I was in high school to understand the evidence about mitochondrial origins was what caused me to accept that evolution wasn't just an alternative belief to creationism.., Spameroo (talk) 12:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]