Breathe in...Breathe Out
From an ecological perspective, the perpetuation of the animal and plant kingdoms are juxtaposed with precise symbiosis. Animals are heterotrophic, deriving their nutritional requirements from complex organic substances. Plants are autotrophic, deriving their nutritional requirements from inorganic substances like carbon dioxide. Along with the nutrients animals need from organic substances, they also need oxygen for cellular respiration. As animals breathe in oxgyen that is produced through plant respiration, they exhale carbon dioxide that plants utilize for converting the light from the sun into energy - a process called photosynthesis.
From a metaphysical perspective, animals and plants can alter each other's physical limitations through synergy. Prior to the domestication of plants i.e. agriculture, heterotrophic organisms like humans were unable to establish fixed settlements. Early humans roamed the earth as hunters and gatherers. With the knowledge of agriculture, advanced civilizations flourished.
In Earth's prehistory before the appearance of heterotrophic organisms, algae that covered the oceans was the first of the autotrophic organisms to populate the planet. However, at this point in history, plant mobility was entirely dependent upon the ocean's tides. Then complex animals like vertebrates appear in the geological record and land-based plants follow. Thus, the biodiversity of the plant kingdom correlates directly with the biodiversity of the animal kingdom. In time, the locomotive limitations of plants seemingly disappeared. Insects and birds carried pollen and seeds all over the world, bringing new plant species to faraway continents that were separated by great distances. Eventually, humans developed a system were plant life could be circulated on a much larger scale, through the modern agricultural and farming industries.
As humanity ascends into the future, and plants become increasingly manipulated through modern genetics to yield more favorable traits, can we expect reciprocity? Are there elements within the autotrophic genome that have the ability to alter the heterotrophic genome through epigenetics?
REK
