 This ecological viewpoint serves to depict somatic and microbial cell populations as systems of communication and information exchange. With the change in focus from individuals to ecosystems, the classical dichotomies governing immunology’s theory, i.e., tolerance/responsiveness, immune/non-immune, self/nonself, has been revised. How these oppositions collapse in an information-based ecological format is illustrated by the phenomenon of inter-kingdom signaling, a form of communication that not only bridges an evolutionary gap between microbes and host, but also helps to overcome putative boundaries between immune, epithelial, and neural systems (cf. Hughes and Sperandio 2008). When considered from the environmental perspective, the transition site between the genetic body and its resident microbes is no longer a frontline of defense but rather an ecological ecotone, an interactive zone at which cellular communities engage in a dialogue to explore new adaptive opportunities (Tauber 2008). The importance of such interfaces is well illustrated by mutual scaffolding and niche construction strategies that are utilized by microbial symbionts and their hosts to direct development of larger ecological units (i.e., holobionts) (Chiu and S. Gilbert 2015).