The Pace of Life: Metabolic Energy, Biological Time, and Life History
The Pace of Life: Metabolic Energy, Biological Time, and Life History
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DOI：
10.1093/icb/icac058
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发表时间：
2022-12-06
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Hall, Charles A. S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brown, James H.;Burger, Joseph R.;Hall, Charles A. S.
内容提要 新的生物物理学理论和电子数据库带来了推导出生命基本规律的可能性，这是一个概念框架，用于阐释分子、细胞和个体生物的结构与功能如何催生出生态学、进化和生物多样性的突现模式及过程。该框架具有很强的通用性，适用于从10⁻¹⁰克的原生生物到10⁸克的鲸鱼等各类动物，也适用于从沙漠、深海到热带雨林和珊瑚礁等各种环境。它有几个显著特征：（1）能量是生物体最终的限制资源，也是生物适应性的衡量标准。（2）大多数生物体的适应性近乎相同，因为在稳态下的每一代，它们向存活后代传递的能量（约22.4千焦/克）和生物量（约1克/克）数量相等。这就是等适应性范式（EFP）。（3）生命史的巨大多样性在很大程度上源于代谢率（例如，通过同化、呼吸和生产进行的能量摄取与消耗）和生物时间（例如，世代时间）的变化。如同标准的异速生长和代谢理论所述，大多数生理和生命史特征与体重m大致呈四分之一次幂函数关系（速率约与m⁻¹/⁴成正比，时间约与m¹/⁴成正比），且与温度呈指数函数关系。（4）时间是生命的第四维度。世代时间是生命的节奏。（5）然而，存在相当一部分变异无法用上述比例关系和现有理论解释。这种 “无法解释” 的变异大多源于对生命史特征的自然选择，以使世代的生物时间适应地质年代环境周期的时钟时间。（6）关于生物比例关系和代谢生态学的大多数研究都集中在呼吸速率上。新出现的综合理论运用能量学的概念基础和等适应性范式，将重点转移到生产率和世代时间上。
Synopsis New biophysical theory and electronic databases raise the prospect of deriving fundamental rules of life, a conceptual framework for how the structures and functions of molecules, cells, and individual organisms give rise to emergent patterns and processes of ecology, evolution, and biodiversity. This framework is very general, applying across taxa of animals from 10(-10) g protists to 10(8) g whales, and across environments from deserts and abyssal depths to rain forests and coral reefs. It has several hallmarks: (1) Energy is the ultimate limiting resource for organisms and the currency of biological fitness. (2) Most organisms are nearly equally fit, because in each generation at steady state they transfer an equal quantity of energy (similar to 22.4 kJ/g) and biomass (similar to 1 g/g) to surviving offspring. This is the equal fitness paradigm (EFP). (3) The enormous diversity of life histories is due largely to variation in metabolic rates (e.g., energy uptake and expenditure via assimilation, respiration, and production) and biological times (e.g., generation time). As in standard allometric and metabolic theory, most physiological and life history traits scale approximately as quarter-power functions of body mass, m (rates as similar to m(-1/4) and times as similar to m(1/4)), and as exponential functions of temperature. (4) Time is the fourth dimension of life. Generation time is the pace of life. (5) There is, however, considerable variation not accounted for by the above scalings and existing theories. Much of this "unexplained" variation is due to natural selection on life history traits to adapt the biological times of generations to the clock times of geochronological environmental cycles. (6) Most work on biological scaling and metabolic ecology has focused on respiration rate. The emerging synthesis applies conceptual foundations of energetics and the EFP to shift the focus to production rate and generation time.