"Staying alive is as much about bonding with your neighbors as it is about competing with them. The evidence is all around us but is easily overlooked - it lies hidden in the evolutionary alliances that every plant and animal forges with one sort of microbe or another. Microbes have long been reviled as "germs" and carriers of disease, yet biologist and award-winning writer Tom Wakeford shows how they have blazed a trail of evolutionary innovation without which life as we know it would not exist.".

"Drawing together new evidence on everything from deep-sea volcanoes to the gaps between our teeth, Wakeford also charts the precarious fortunes of the pioneers of the theory of symbiosis: Beatrix Potter, H. G. Wells, Louis Pasteur, and Lynn Margulis.".

"As a direct challenge to the "tooth and claw" view of evolution, symbiosis has created a firestorm of controversy in the scientific community since it was first proposed one hundred and fifty years ago, only to be vindicated in recent years."--BOOK JACKET.