Word.ws English Dictionary

endosymbiosis

endosymbiosis noun: the condition of living within the body or cells of another organism; an instance of an organism so living.

Noun

endosymbiosis (countable and uncountable, plural endosymbioses)

  1. The condition of living within the body or cells of another organism; an instance of an organism so living.
    • Interspecific associations are currently believed to take part in evolution by improving a partner's fitness through integrated endosymbioses or by causing reproductive isolation and subsequent host speciation, such as in the Wolbachia endosymbioses (Nardon and Grenier, 1991; Margulis, 1993a...2003, Abdelaziz Heddi, “5: Endosymbiosis in the Weevil of the Genus Sitophilus: Genetic, Physiological, and Molecular Interactions among Associated Genomes”, in Kostas Bourtzis, Thomas A. Miller...
    • Evidence is now overwhelming that several groups of eukaryotic algae originated from a secondary endosymbiosis, in which a eukaryotic alga was incorporated into a second host (Palmer and Delwiche, 1996; Delwiche and Palmer, 1997; Delwiche, 1999; Keeling, 2010, 2013; Curtis et al., 2012).2014, Robert E. Blankenship, Molecular Mechanisms of Photosynthesis, Wiley Blackwell, 2nd Edition, page 226

Forms of endosymbiosis

pluralendosymbioses

Origin of endosymbiosis

From endo- + symbiosis.

Words formed from endosymbiosis

  • primary endosymbiosis
  • secondary endosymbiosis

Questions about endosymbiosis

What does endosymbiosis mean?
Endosymbiosis means the condition of living within the body or cells of another organism; an instance of an organism so living.
What part of speech is endosymbiosis?
Endosymbiosis is a noun.
What is the plural of endosymbiosis?
The plural of endosymbiosis is endosymbioses.

Words near endosymbiosis in the dictionary

  1. endosymbiogenic
  2. endosymbiont
  3. endosymbiontic
  4. endosymbionts
  5. endosymbioses
  6. endosymbiosis
  7. endosymbiotic
  8. endosymbiotic theory
  9. endosymbiotically
  10. endosystolic
  11. endotactic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: endosymbiosis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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