In southern Africa, the greater honeyguide leads people to beehives with a distinctive call. Once the people take the honey, the bird eats the wax left behind. Having learned that following the bird meant finding honey, people eventually mastered a call of their own to summon it — an intricate partnership built by two different species over a very long time.
In his new book "The Language of Symbiosis," evolutionary ecologist Rob Dunn examines such relationships through the concept of mutualism, in which two different species form a relationship that benefits both. Humans have maintained such relationships with countless organisms for millions of years. From the yeasts that supply food through fermentation, to the dogs that aided human hunting, to the grains and livestock that became sustenance, human history is a history of give-and-take with other species.
New partnerships emerged without fail whenever the climate shifted abruptly. Roughly 15,000 years ago, as temperatures rose, the bond between humans and dogs deepened. Settled life followed, and people began cultivating the grains that were ancestors to wheat, barley and rye. From the human point of view, the grains were domesticated. From the grains' point of view, they exploited an environment humans had made to expand their own range.
The advance of civilization and technology also bred the illusion that humans could depend less on nature. The Haber-Bosch process, which mass-produces synthetic fertilizer, sharply increased food output and made natural fertilizer unnecessary. Instead, the excess nutrients humans left unused flowed into rivers and oceans, with side effects that unsettled the cycles of ecosystems.
Humans still depend on thousands of mutualistic partners, yet treat nature as though they were a special and superior species on this planet. Nature's warnings against that stance are growing louder. Last month, in the Himalayas along the Nepal-Tibet border, part of a massive glacier collapsed and triggered widespread flooding. The imbalance in nature caused by human activity is producing disasters that were once hard to imagine.
Humans are one species, no more special and no less important than the blue whale, reindeer lichen or the ant — just one among billions, even trillions, of living things. Accepting that fact, the author says, is the starting point for entering into mutualism with other species again, and he urges readers not to forget it. 25,000 won.
