Title:
Life-Environment Interactions in Major Evolutionary Transitions, Microbial Communities and Steering Complex Adaptive Systems: A whistlestop introductory research tour

Abstract:
I'll present the initial ideas from research project with Nathaniel Virgo, asking how the emergence and evolution of homeostasis and environmental regulation might interact with the Major Transitions in Evolution and the formation of new evolutionary levels over time. This project springs from a desire to address a clear disconnection between the autopoietic or enactive and the evolutionary perspectives on the biological individual. Autopoiesis prioritises the self-constructing, self-maintaining metabolic individual which defines itself as separate from and modulates its interaction with the environment. Individuals are autocatalytic, bounded chemical processes whose physical nature is considered seriously. However, these theories have not so far been able to successfully incorporate the formation of new higher-level individuals over evolutionary time. On the other hand, evolutionary theory defines individuality for the most part in terms of the stabilization of groups of co-operators into new evolutionary units, in which within-group reproductive conflict is suppressed. Organism-organism interaction is usually the primary consideration. This focus often minimizes the physicality of the individual and reduces the importance of organism-environment interactions. By focussing on collective biological niche construction and considering how the continual processes of interaction of organism and environment may evolve, we aim to explore the incorporation of such interactions into the selective processes. Including how they potentially support the emergence and consolidation of new levels of individuality over evolutionary time. I will discuss plans to consider various example systems. In particular, modeling the emergence and evolutionary implications of homeostatic environmental regulation in a synthetic yeast-algae mutualism. Work which also has practical implications for synthetic ecology.
In addition to these ELSI-based projects, I will give an overview of my "day job", designing new tools and approaches for participatory steering of complex adaptive systems. In particular the work that I do with the UK government on new complexity-appropriate tools for policy design and evaluation and similar approaches used for community co-design of regional complex systems. This involves working with diverse groups of people involved in particular socio-ecological-economic systems, such as regional economies or agricultural systems, to build collective models of their complex systems which allow them to design interventions and policy decisions as part of ongoing adaptive management. These approaches currently focus on smaller regional or national scales and lack an explicit Earth Systems Science perspective, vital for policy making in the Anthropocene. Perhaps some exciting ideas could be generated at this interface?
I will also give a brief overview of some of my previous and ongoing projects which might be of interest to ELSI researchers: Using bacterial biofilms to study evolution of co-operation and major transitions in evolution; citizen science projects on soil microbial communities; human interaction with microbial communities in the contexts of agriculture and AMR. And finally, an overview of the new Artificial Life and Society initiative which I head, which considers the future of societal interaction with living, lifelike and hybrid complex adaptive systems and technologies at all scales.