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The historical dimension of biology attests to the various conceptions of living organisms that have governed the construction of scientific knowledge over time, some of which still persist today. The present study aimed to identify and characterise the various conceptions of living organisms held by future teachers and biologists and the influence of university education (with or without a scientific profile). The results show that animist, vitalist, finalist, evolutionist, interactionist, hereditary and behavioural determinist conceptions coexist in explaining living organisms and the university education with a scientific profile appears to promote current conceptions over outdated ones. Thus, 80.6% of future science teachers and biologists rejected metaphysical explanations of living organisms, whereas 55.3% of future elementary and secondary school teachers accepted them. Yet, the results of this study also brought out finalist explanations of living organisms among the majority of both profiles, without (90.6%) and with science (79.0%), indicating that a poor understanding of evolutionism still persists today, despite a well-developed science culture. The continued existence of  obstacle-conceptions  and the influence on them of a well-developed science culture points to the importance of the quality of science education for gaining a better grasp of the concepts related to living organisms.

Epistemology and biology teaching: obstacles to a contemporary conceptualisation of living organisms among future teachers and biologists