Superorganism

A mound built by cathedral termites
A coral colony

A superorganism, or supraorganism,[1] is a group of synergetically-interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically-interacting organisms of different species is called a holobiont.

  1. ^ Lüttge, Ulrich (ed.); Cánovas, Francisco M. (ed.); Matyssek, Rainer (ed.). Progress in Botany 77. Springer, 2016, p. 223. “Note that etymologically, the Latin word ‘supra’ means ‘higher’ in the sense of ordination, whereas ‘super’ implies a spatial order. Thus, in contrast to the mainly used notion of ‘superorganism’, we prefer to stay with the notion of a ‘supraorganism’.”