The immeasurable complexity at every level of biological organization creates a daunting task for understanding biological function. Here, we highlight the risks of stripping it away at the outset and discuss a possible path toward arriving at emergent simplicity of understanding while still embracing the ever-changing complexity of biotic interactions that we see in nature.
Keywords: eco-evolutionary dynamics; ecological context; evolutionary biology; functional biology; physics of living systems; systems biology.
© 2021, Bergelson et al.