Exploring New "Histories of Nature" with Marine Microbes: Living Matter at the Edge of Life

In the face of the current environmental crisis, i.e. climate change, the life and death of marine microbes has gained renewed scientific attention. Until recently unicellular marine microbes, such as phytoplankton, have been considered immortal unless eaten by predators. As marine ecologists recognize phytoplankton’s important role in the global carbon cycle, the assumption of their atemporal existence is currently revised. Microbiologists suggest that under specific conditions entire populations of phytoplankton actively kill themselves. Drawing on empirical research into the life and death of marine microbes, this paper explores how an affirmation of phytoplankton’s mortality may reconstruct the relationship between life and death and how deep seated metaphysical assumptions may become revised in a time of crisis. The idea that death is an evolutionary adaptation seems no longer tenable. As phytoplankton challenge the relationship between life and death and the boundary between an individual and a population, marine viruses are complicating the boundary between life and nonlife and the ontologies of substance and process. The liveliness of viruses seems to depend on their connections. Together, I argue, recent research into marine microbes suggests new histories of nature in the ocean, while also interrogating the relationship between science and philosophy.