Maximum entropy production and plant optimization theories
Maximum entropy production and plant optimization theories
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2009.0293
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发表时间：
2010-05-12
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Dewar, Roderick C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dewar, Roderick C.
植物生态学家提出了各种优化理论，从自然选择（“适者生存”）的角度来解释植物的适应行为和进化。优化理论确定了一些目标函数，如茎部或冠层光合作用，或生长率，这些函数在一个或多个植物功能性状中最大化。然而，这些目标函数与植物个体适应度之间的联系很少被量化，并且对于目标函数的最合适选择仍然存在一些不确定性。在这里，植物从另一种热力学的角度来看，作为一个更广泛的非平衡系统的成员，最大熵产生（MEP）已被提出作为一个共同的理论原则。我展示了MEP是如何将不同的植物优化理论统一起来的，这些理论是基于个体适应度的特殊测量而提出的——这些理论的不同目标函数在不同的时空尺度上作为熵产的例子出现。MEP的统计解释，即MEP状态是迄今为止最可能的状态，提出了一种新的和扩展的生物进化范式——“最可能的生存”——它适用于生物大分子的生态系统，而不仅仅是个人。
Plant ecologists have proposed a variety of optimization theories to explain the adaptive behaviour and evolution of plants from the perspective of natural selection ('survival of the fittest'). Optimization theories identify some objective function-such as shoot or canopy photosynthesis, or growth rate-which is maximized with respect to one or more plant functional traits. However, the link between these objective functions and individual plant fitness is seldom quantified and there remains some uncertainty about the most appropriate choice of objective function to use. Here, plants are viewed from an alternative thermodynamic perspective, as members of a wider class of non-equilibrium systems for which maximum entropy production (MEP) has been proposed as a common theoretical principle. I show how MEP unifies different plant optimization theories that have been proposed previously on the basis of ad hoc measures of individual fitness-the different objective functions of these theories emerge as examples of entropy production on different spatio-temporal scales. The proposed statistical explanation of MEP, that states of MEP are by far the most probable ones, suggests a new and extended paradigm for biological evolution-'survival of the likeliest'-which applies from biomacromolecules to ecosystems, not just to individuals.