Symbiosis, or What Should I Write About?

Niche - always feeling - me, who?

Photo by Eugenia Ai on Unsplash

Niche

In ecology, a niche is the unique position of a species in an ecological community. A species’ niche is determined by a combination of physical location, available food sources, the presence of other organisms (predator, prey, competitors, etc.), and environmental conditions. In short, a niche describes the ‘fit’ between a species and the environment in which individuals of this species survive and, best case scenario, thrive.

As it often happens, the biological concept has been co-opted by the world of business. A company’s niche is the slice of the market it wants to target. Sprinkle the internet and social media over it to transform the market into the begging creator economy and aspiring creators who secretly hope to turn their passion into a product have to find their niche.

So says the usual advice¹. If you want to turn your newsletter into a success story that at least lets you design your own metaphorical hamster wheel, you better have a niche. Politics, (fake) health advice, and oversimplified (often misogynist or misandrist) relationship/dating advice are good bets². And that makes sense. People want to know what they’re in for and outrage drives engagement more than anything else. We are bombarded with loud soundbites that eagerly grab our dwindling attention spans by the scruff of their necks. If you follow, subscribe, or support someone, that person’s niche gives you a good initial idea of what will come your way.

Welcome to Subtle Sparks, where we explore biology. And technology. Oh, and personal essays. Sometimes literature, culture, and philosophy. Probably a mix of all the above. Not to mention wordplay, funky footnotes, and double layers (triple on a good day).

Uh oh.

Always feeling

From a purely practical perspective, it would make sense for me to focus only on science (biology and biotechnology). It’s (most of) my academic background and my current day job is in science communication. I should know what I’m doing in that domain.

But doing only that could become a problem.

You see, I suffer from a dreadful and lethal condition called being human. My particular subtype of that condition comes with a strong sensitivity to feelings and emotions.

A lot of (but not all) science writing oozes the commandment ‘no feelings shall enter here’. That does a disservice to both the science and the writing part.

Scientists tend to be passionate, driven people who often choose to dedicate their lives to a particular slice of the universe. At its root, that choice is always emotional, even (and especially) when people claim it’s not. And writing can do more than merely convey objective information. It can evoke those messy things called feelings, transport us to new worlds, and provide playful flickers when the world goes dark.

To me, writing without emotion feels like a lobotomy. Does that mean I shouldn’t write about science? *does a cartwheel to distract impostor syndrome* I think I’m not a terrible science writer (I’m sure I would have been fired a while ago if I were). I might even go so far as to say that letting my personality and voice shine through makes me a better science writer, and a better writer in general. Writing without at least a glimmer of personality or emotion reads like a dispassionate lecture³.

That doesn’t mean I make factual claims without relying on data and evidence, but it also doesn’t mean that that is all I want to do. I don’t want to be a distant instructor who drones like a mindless chatbot. I want to go exploring with you. As a person, not a robot who spits facts. And for that, the person needs to come through in the writing, at least a little bit, at least sometimes. Why should I have to choose between facts and feelings? Why be half a human? There is room for both.

Here’s the crucial bit that got lost in translation when business, solopreneurship, and social media adopted the term niche: a niche is not static.

One of the reasons I’ve been drawn to biology for as long as I can remember is that beneath the veneer of order, there awaits a beautiful and boisterous madness. Niches contract and expand; species change and populations adapt. It’s evolution, baby.

Actually, why squeeze into a narrow niche when you could be an ecosystem? Or better yet, a symbiosis.

Me, who?

Roughly 2.2 billion years ago, a big but still microscopic blob (an archaea from the Asgard group) swallowed a little blob (an alphaproteobacterium). Little blob was not happy with this turn of events and stubbornly refused to be digested. After a while, little blob made its home inside big blob. Little blob became even smaller and, as rent, it helped big blob process oxygen.

This story is one of the greatest leaps life ever made. Today, we know the descendants of little blob as mitochondria. Yes, the mitochondria that are essential for powering every cell in your body. The story, titled endosymbiosis, was first formulated in detail by biologist Lynn Margulis, who stuck to her guns in the face of great opposition.

Symbiosis, in the narrow sense⁴, is a close and long-term interaction between organisms of different species to the benefit of both.

Before little blob, oxygen was poisonous to big blob. After the symbiosis, the niche of big blob expanded to include environments with oxygen — symbiosis expands and diversifies the niche of a species.

Yet, it takes you only a few clicks to find someone who endlessly repeats the same senseless one-liners and still has an army of followers that dwarfs the population of a small country⁵. Having a specific niche works.

As a symbiosis between science and literature, between thinking and feeling, my niche just happens to expand and diversify, like a root system, a fungal network, or the shapeshifting grin of a trickster. This newsletter is a process, a quest, and a co-creation.

It is Darwin’s tangled bank and if you look closely, you’ll see shy glimmers of me.

And maybe that’s okay.

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Thanks for tagging along and letting me share my words with you. That too is part of the symbiosis.

1. If you squirmed in your seat, you are one of my people. Welcome to Subtle Sparks; we’re going to have fun together.

2. Cynical? Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

3. For the science communication aficionados, this is an example of the ‘information deficit model’ of science communication, which proposes that the sole (or at least major) goal of science communication is to deliver information to the public. By now, we know that many more factors (ethics, politics, religious beliefs, culture, history, personal experience…) affect the way people (don’t) accept new information. Good science communication will try to take those into account and do more than only force information down your cognitive gullet.

4. The term symbiosis is also used in a broader sense, which includes interactions such as parasitism and commensalism (neutral for one partner, beneficial for the other).

5. See footnote 2.