Biology is a science with many stories. Each organism is a unique product of its evolutionary history, its adaptation to its environmental niche, and the constraints imposed by the laws of physics. With roughly 1.7 million known species, each one of which is enormously complex in its own right, there is a bewildering array of curiosities, exceptions, and oddballs. Given this riot of biological diversity, it can hardly be surprising that there has been a trend toward the "model systems" approach, which picks a handful of species to study in great detail. After all, it would be a great accomplishment to fully understand just one species. But model systems can only take us so far; to understand life it is necessary to grapple with its full diversity, including that which is unfamiliar or unseen. In a very real sense, each species has its own tale to tell.
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