Episode 61

The third in a series of episodes in which Jim Penny of the Oxford Botanic Garden joins me to discuss symbiosis and inter-species mutualism. We consider how mycorrhizal networks in forest ecosystems (as discussed last time) could possibly be explained by natural selection, before embarking on a fascinating tangent involving the Russian anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin and his against-the-grain application of Darwinian theory to social organisation.

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Some relevant links:

• mycorrhizal networks
• natural selection
• Charles Darwin
• C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)
• Down House, near Bromley, Kent
• Peter Kropotkin
• P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
• the Kropotkin 1876 jailbreak
• emergence
• self-organisation
• rational egoism
• roving coralgrouper (Plectropomus pessuliferus)
• giant moray eel (Gymnothorax javanicus)
• grouper-moray cooperative hunting