A molecular biologist colleague came to "Religion of Trees" today to help us understand the networks and relationships described by Suzanne Simard in her Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. With lovely visuals she took us from Simard's tracing of webs of symbiosis between forest tree species (assisted of course by fungi) to a profounder understanding of the kinship of all life. She introduced horizontal/lateral gene transfer, and showed how it makes all current life forms hybrid.
She said she rejects the taxonomy of animals, fungi and plants, and showed us this pie chart. Outcomes of long histories of jumping genes, we're kin with all life already!