THE ORGANISM, ITS INDIVIDUALITY, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ECOLOGY

The living organism presents itself as one of the most in-teresting, important and ubiquitous phenomena of nature. One of its most fascinating attributes is biological individuality, in the sense that each organism is unique in time and space - a basic characteristic of biodiversity on planet Earth. The organism and its nature, however, remain far removed from scientific interpretations. With regard to Ecology, historically, routine research and leading theories have not considered the role of organisms and their individual variation as a source of patterns and processes, and only recently have new approach-es begun to realize the importance of these phenomena. In this sense, the aim of this article is to analyze the organism and its individuality, and its consequences for ecological science. The aim is to bring the subject closer to ecologists not used to dealing with these issues, especially South Americans, con-sidering that the literature on the subject is in English, has a strong philosophical accent, and is not usually consulted by students, training, and specialists. In this review, we investi-gate (i) theories about the organism, (ii) the nature of indi-viduality, (iii) its biological causes, and (iv) implications for Ecology. The review should help ecologists to understand and recognize the organism and its individuality as fundamental aspects in proposing explanations, analysis and interpretation of ecological data.