 A second ontological consideration states that developing and evolving organisms are integrated collective individuals, so-called holobionts or ‘meta-organisms’ (Zilber-Rosenberg &amp; Rosenberg 2008; Bosch &amp; McFall-Ngai 2011; Gilbert, Sapp, &amp; Tauber 2012; see also O'Malley 2017; Baedke et al. 2020a). Therefore, our discussions about evolution must take into consideration that each organism is a consortium having numerous genomes, not just one, as traditionally assumed. Mathematical modeling of the evolution of holobionts that take this diversity into consideration is just beginning (Roughgarden et al. 2018; Osmanovic et al. 2018; Roughgarden 2020). This new ontological framework states that symbiosis is the norm; it is not peripheral. These symbionts can act at different stages of the life cycle and are seen to scaffold development (Griesemer 2014; Chiu &amp; Gilbert 2015; Minelli 2016). In ‘scaffolding,’ each developmental stage is made possible by entities and processes that catalyze these activities, which allows novel and evolutionary relevant processes to occur at lower difficulties and costs.