When we walk into a forest, we’re not walking into a place that is full of separate interacting individuals…We’re walking into a living network, a place where every creature exists only through relationships with others…Every leaf on a tree has hundreds of species of bacteria and fungi living within its leaves. Without those other species, the leaf cannot function; it gets overrun by pathogens…What is true for a tree is also true for an individual human. Our bodies are made of dozens and dozens of interacting species—not just human cells, but bacterial and fungal cells and viruses and microbial components and so forth, and without the interconnections among all those members of the community, our bodies don’t function.

~ David George Haskell

Living Network of Life – photo by Smileus, bigstockphoto.com