land plants from the sea to the land. To me this idea of a grand global mutualism seems to run foul of the basic problem that most organisms are engaged in much shorter term battles for survival (against other members of their own species, against other competing species and against predators and prey) that determine their behavior much more than any long-term goal of saving the planet over thousands and millions of years. Also, if the 'temptation' to cheat in a mutualism is great on the scale of flowers and bees, think how tempting and easy it would be for an organism to cheat on the scale of the whole planet, with mechanisms often taking thousands of years to operate. It's not as is the bad consequences of cheating are just around the corner, or that they increase noticeably if you as an individual cheat because there are so many billions and trillions of organisms involved in the relationship. I really can't believe that such a mutualism would 'work'. It may be that as a fortunate, incidental 'by product' of their ever day activities, organisms help stabilize the Earth's environment, but not because they have evolved characteristics specifically for this purpose. If the Gaia mechanisms really do work to stabilize the Earth's environment for all the life on Earth, then in a sense I suppose it is a real mutualism, in that it works; but it's one that hasn't been selected for. Seems to me that the organisms involved in controlling the Earth's environment have not been selected by evolution for being good at taking part in this mutualism, they just incidentally happen to have these beneficial effects on the planet while going about their normal daily business. ...
