 Although philosophers drawing on microbiome research have tended so far to focus on metaphysical issues of individuality, issues associated with microbiome explanations are probably more pressing for the science and are now undergoing philosophical scrutiny. These investigations can work in two directions: using philosophical frameworks to explore the nature of microbiome causality or even whether it occurs (e.g., Lynch et al. 2019), then using the insights gained to reflect further on the philosophy of causal explanation. For example, Gillies (2019) examines treatment regimes arising out of microbiome research and proposes a “causal law” account of explanation to account for such phenomena. Other approaches take frameworks for causal explanation such as interventionism (see  SEP entry on causation and manipulability)  and propose refinements that arise from examinations of putative microbiome causality (Attah et al. 2020; Oftedal 2020). A particularly strong finding of such analyses is that tradeoffs between key dimensions of causal explanation (stability, specificity, proportionality) require further philosophical attention.