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J.Konstapel,Leiden,14-10-2026.
This blog is written in english ans is related to a podcast on the Agora.
Short Dutch summary
“The Weaving of Life” betoogt dat de drie domeinen van het leven (Bacteria, Archaea en Eukaryoten) diep met elkaar verweven zijn, niet alleen via afstamming maar vooral via horizontale genoverdracht en endosymbiose. Het boek laat zien dat samenwerking en symbiose op alle niveaus terugkomen: van genen die van soort naar soort springen tot cellen die andere cellen opnemen en meercelligheid die meer dan 25 keer onafhankelijk ontstond. Uiteindelijk vormt het leven één groot netwerk waarin elke nieuwe verbinding voortbouwt op eerdere samenwerkingen, met de mens als recent knooppunt dat bijna alle zoogdierbiomassa beheert.
One ancestor, three domains
The book opens with the deepest question. All cellular life falls into three groups: Bacteria, Archaea and eukaryotes. How are they connected?
The grouping began in 1977, with ribosomal RNA. That comparison found “three aboriginal lines of descent”. In 1990 the rank of domain was proposed: Archaea, Bacteria and Eucarya. In 2013 newer methods shook this picture. Eukaryotic core genes fell inside the Archaea. The authors wrote that the three-domains tree “may be incorrect”.
Since 2015 the Asgard archaea settled the matter. The first Asgard genome carried eukaryote-like proteins. In 2023, 63 new genomes placed eukaryotes “as a well-nested clade within Asgard archaea”. And in 2019 the first Asgard cell was cultured after twelve years of work: Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum, a slow organism of about 550 nm that doubles in two to three weeks.
How old is the common ancestor? The book gives three answers side by side. One study says about 4.2 Ga. Another says more than 3.9 Ga. A third says 3.5–3.8 Ga. The book does not average them. It records the spread and moves on.
The rock record tells the same story in stone. A 4.10 Ga zircon from Jack Hills holds graphite with a carbon signature of possible life. Putative microfossils in Quebec may be 3,770–4,280 million years old. Isua sediments in Greenland hold isotopically light carbon from about 3.7 Ga. Younger records cluster in Australia: hot-spring deposits at 3.48 Ga, sulphate reduction at 3.47 Ga, methanogenesis before 3.46 Ga.
LUCA itself has been reconstructed twice. One study traced 355 gene families to it. Another models a genome of 2,657 proteins. Both describe the same organism: anaerobic, CO₂-fixing, thermophilic.
Genes that move sideways
The book’s sharpest finding is that the tree of life is mostly not a tree. Genes move between lineages.
The numbers are stark. In 181 prokaryotic genomes, “at least 81 ± 15 %” of each genome’s genes took part in lateral transfer. In E. coli, 17.6 % of genes entered by transfer since it split from Salmonella. Between domains, bacteria-to-archaea flow is more than five times the reverse. Against this traffic, the tree-like core is tiny: about 1 % of an average prokaryotic proteome.
The cell that ate
The second connection is the deepest union of all. One cell took in another and kept it.
The mitochondrion dates between 2.05 and 1.21 Ga. The plastid, taken from a cyanobacterium, carries five different dates spread over 0.85 Gyr. Both events happened once. Two later primary uptakes are known: Paulinella and UCYN-A, which has gained organelle status.
Each uptake follows the same pattern. The bacterium loses genes to its host. Rickettsia, a free-living relative, has 834 protein genes. Human mitochondria keep 13. Synechocystis has 3,168 proteins; the Arabidopsis plastid keeps 87, with about 4,500 moved to the nucleus.
Plastids then passed “from hand to hand” through further eatings. Red and green nucleomorphs — tiny remnant nuclei — both hold three chromosomes. Insect bacteria show the same shrinking: Buchnera in aphids keeps 583 genes, and the smallest symbiont, Nasuia, only 112 kb.
Some animals steal chloroplasts outright. Sea slugs keep stolen plastids working for months. An Antarctic dinoflagellate keeps them for at least 30 months.
Becoming many
Multicellularity arose again and again. The book counts more than 25 origins across eukaryotes. At least seven arose by aggregation. Many arose by clonal growth, in red and green algae and once in brown algae.
The dates run from cyanobacteria at 2.45–2.22 Ga to red algae at 1.047 Ga, animals at 574–558 Ma, land plants at 515–470 Ma, and volvocine green algae at 250–50 Ma.
Animals and their microbes
Every animal carries a microbial load. A human holds about as many bacterial cells as human cells — 3.8 against 3.0 × 10¹³ — almost all in 0.4 litres of colon. Microbial fermentation supplies about 10 % of human energy. In a ruminant it supplies about 70 %.
The partnerships are old and specific. Hominid-gut bacteria cospeciation is dated at 15 Myr. Coral photosymbiosis is about 212 Myr. Bioluminescence in deep-sea fish, powered by housed bacteria, is about 150 Myr. The bacterium Wolbachia lives in 40–66 % of all arthropod species.
Squid flush their light-organ symbionts each dawn and regrow them within hours. Bees build a gut community of a billion bacteria in ten days.
Fungi between the kingdoms
Fungi sit between animals and plants and connect both. Clocks date fungi at roughly 1,000–1,760 Ma. Fossils run from 1,010–890 Ma to glomalean spores at ~460 Ma.
The partnerships multiply. Arbuscular mycorrhiza form one phylum that touches most plants. Ectomycorrhiza arose 66–82 times in fungi and 30 times in plants. Lichens arose 20–30 times. Wood-rot fungi split the work: white rot dates to ~300 Ma; brown rot arose at least four times.
Animals even farm fungi. Ants, ambrosia beetles and termites evolved this agriculture at least twelve times, with ant agriculture dated at about 66.65 Ma.
Coming ashore together
Life did not colonise land alone. It went as a community.
Microbial mats stood on land from 3,220 Ma — 2,747 million years before plant spores. By clock, fungi lost their flagellum at ~720 Ma, still before plants. Arthropod tracks appear at the Cambrian–Ordovician boundary. Vascular plants follow at 426.9 Ma. Charcoal — proof of burning vegetation — appears at 423 Ma.
Then comes the jewel: the Rhynie chert, 411.5 Ma. It preserves a whole community. Plants of 10–40 cm with arbuscular mycorrhiza inside them. A lichen. About ten fungi. Nematodes. Seven arthropod groups of 0.29–20 mm. The book reads it as the first snapshot of a working land ecosystem.
Eating and being eaten
The oldest predation trace is a hole in the oldest mineralised animal tube: 2.7 % of more than 500 tubes. The oldest parasitism is Cambrian: 47.8 % of 429 brachiopods bore encrusting parasites.
Predation intensified in steps. Drilling frequency rose from 10–20 % to 100 %. Eleven of 13 shell-breaking groups arose in the Triassic–Cretaceous.
The modern numbers are sharp. Predators average 42 times their prey’s mass. Parasitoids average 0.76 times their host’s. Mean energy transfer between levels is 10 %. Food chains run 3.5 to 5 levels. Parasitism arose at least 223 times in animals and 12 times in flowering plants. And plants outweigh animals 225 to 1.
Flowers, fruit and animals
Insects appear before flowers. Rhyniognatha, the earliest insect fossil, precedes the angiosperm clades by about 276 Myr. Pollination is recorded on gymnosperms at about 165 Ma, and on angiosperms from 100–99 Ma.
Today about 87.5–90 % of the 295,383 known angiosperm species are animal-pollinated, by about 350,000 pollinator species. Vertebrates are only 0.42 % of pollinators — but excluding them cuts seed set by 63 %.
Seed dispersal runs from 1 m, carried by ants, to 5.3 km, carried by elephants. Three-quarters of 52 measured mutualistic networks are nested: specialists attach to generalists, like branches to a shared trunk.
The cycles across kingdoms
The elements that life needs are passed between kingdoms in loops.
The dates: sulphate reduction at 3.47 Ga. Nitrogen fixation at 3.2 Ga by isotopes. Free oxygen at 2.46–2.33 Ga — the Great Oxidation.
No eukaryote carries the nitrogenase genes. Eukaryotes solve this by housing the fixers: in root nodules of about 10 of 380 angiosperm families, and in UCYN-A, which travelled from symbiont to organelle.
At sea, 10–50 % of production passes through bacteria. The carbon pump shrinks at each step: export is 5.8–8.6 % of global production, only 0.62 % reaches 1,000 m, and 0.19 % is buried. Animals pump elements upward and landward — from zooplankton to whales and seabirds, moving 99 Gg of phosphorus per year. That carrying capacity is now 5–8 % of its former value.
The whole network and the human knot
The book closes with the totals. Estimated species: plants 0.30–0.37 million, fungi 0.6–3.8 million, animals 7.8 million, all eukaryotes 8.7 million. Bacteria may number 1–6 billion species; virus particles 10³⁰–10³¹.
Described shares differ by group. Plants are nearly complete. Insects are about 20 % described. Fungi only 3.2–5.5 %.
The measured links are few: 1.18 pollinators per angiosperm, 3.0 hosts per plant virus, 4.3 viruses per plant. And one figure stands out: humans and their livestock now hold 94–96 % of all mammal mass.
The theory layer, briefly
The book’s second layer sets these patterns beside the author’s Vacuum.Net texts. Four pairings (“reads”) are made. One became a fixed test and passed: in 24 cases, no cell holds a chain of more than two nested partners, each with its own genome. A second test — that each supplier must be older than the one it supplies — failed: 5 of 14 cases. Across the author’s three books, the theory has been tested nine times with outcomes fixed in advance. One passed. The book prints the full score.
Conclusion
Read as biology, the book tells one story: life connected itself by every available route. Genes crossed lineages. Cells took in cells. Cells became bodies. Bodies took partners. Partners became farmers, pollinators, parasites and prey. The elements moved in loops through them all. Each connection arrived on ground that an earlier connection had prepared — microbes before fungi, fungi before plants, plants before pollinators, and finally humans, holding almost all the mammal mass on Earth.
Annotated Reference List
- Konstapel, J. (2026). The Weaving of Life: How Animals, Plants, Fungi and Microorganisms Became Interwoven. Constable Research, Leiden, 13 October 2026.
The primary work. Ten biology chapters (A1–A10), seven data tables (Part C) and a theory layer (Part B). Use: source of all facts in this essay. - Konstapel, J. (2026). The Vacuum.Net Theory: Complete Derivation. Constable Research, Leiden, 28 September 2026.
The five axioms behind Layer B. Why read: to follow the theory statements the book tests. - Konstapel, J. (2026). The Balanced Three, the Balanced Tree and the Vacuum.Net Theory. Constable Research, Leiden, 29 August 2026.
Closure rules and the tree structure of the model. Why read: its §11 maps the model onto species and communities. - Konstapel, J. (2026). The Climate on the Ladder of Three. Constable Research, Leiden, 3 October 2026.
Defines the logarithmic “position” coordinate used for every size and time in the book. Why read: needed for the book’s coordinate system. - Konstapel, J. (2026). Plants on the Ladder and The Company of Plants. Constable Research, Leiden, 12–13 October 2026.
The two earlier books in the series, on photosynthetic life and plant co-evolution. Why read: they hold the six earlier theory tests. - Woese, C. R., and Fox, G. E. (1977). “Phylogenetic structure of the prokaryotic domain: the primary kingdoms.” PNAS 74, 5088–5090.
The ribosomal RNA comparison that first split life into three lines. Why read: the origin of the three-domain view (chapter A1). - Spang, A., et al. (2015). “Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.” Nature 521, 173–179.
The first Asgard (Lokiarchaeota) genome. Why read: the discovery that placed eukaryotes inside the Archaea. - Imachi, H., et al. (2020). “Isolation of an archaeon at the prokaryote–eukaryote interface.” Nature 577, 519–525.
The first cultured Asgard cell, Prometheoarchaeum syntrophicum, after a decade of cultivation. Why read: the closest living relative of the host that took in the mitochondrion. - Williams, T. A., et al. (2013). “An archaeal origin of eukaryotes supports only two primary domains of life.” Nature 504, 231–236.
The two-domain proposal of 2013. Why read: the paper that challenged the three-domain tree. - Nelson-Sathi, S., et al. (2015). “Origins of major archaeal clades correspond to gene acquisitions from bacteria.” Nature 517, 77–80.
Documents 2,264 gene acquisitions from bacteria at the origins of 13 archaeal taxa. Why read: evidence for the dominant direction of gene flow between domains. - Quammen, D. (2018). The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life. Simon & Schuster, 496 pp.
Background book listed by the author. Why read: the narrative history of the shift from tree to web of life. - Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled Life. Random House, 352 pp.
Background book. Why read: fungi as the connective tissue of the living world — lichens, mycorrhiza and networks.
Note: the sources for chapters A3–A10 in the primary work are numbered per chapter; the entries above are the principal studies named in the text. The five background books (Quammen; Dawkins & Wong; Beerling; Sheldrake; Begon, Townsend & Harper) framed the topics only — no number in the primary work is taken from them.