The syntrophic nature of life’s evolution

Organisms typically need each other, with syntrophy as the dominant form of interaction: exchanging products. This is clear at the population, ecosystem and planet Earth levels, but we argue that syntrophy is also fundamental to individual and cellular physiology. With a very simple predator–prey model we illustrate that even predator–prey interactions are dominated by syntrophic principles if attention is paid to nutritional “details”. Our hope is that, by strengthening the coherence of research over time and space scales, research becomes more effective with the syntrophic principle in its core. For this purpose, we briefly evaluate current evolution research to highlight some points that we see as problematic and propose improvements using the Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) theory.