Variations in life history define key comparative and evolutionary biological questions, important for understanding the mechanisms of mammalian evolutionary divergence, developmental adaptability and plasticity. In this regard, the differences among predominantly altricial and precocial species represent a particularly significant, if still poorly understood and contested case. Here, it will be shown how the classical analysis of such ontogenetic variations, going back to the semantic biology of A. Portmann, can be expanded and synthesized with comparative physiological approaches, based on the negentropic theory of ontogeny by I. A. Arshavsky and his school. In this little received but pioneering tradition, extensive comparative and experimental investigations were carried out on the role of musculoskeletal systems and stressors in driving life history variations, particularly in the altricial-precocial spectrum. As shown by Arshavsky and co-workers, by focusing on general allometric regularities, the approximations based on the classical energy rules of surface and mass offer valuable benchmarks, but also predictions that are frequently violated by the variability of physiological and metabolic scaling relationships among altricials and precocials, and thus, a complex and historical approach is needed to describe their local physiological mechanisms and systemic regularities. This paper shows how Arshavsky’s findings and framework can play an integrative role in this context, potentially helping to bridge the mainly descriptive approach of semantic morphology, as developed by Portmann’s school, with the more functional explanations predominating current ecology and life history theory. These problems can be important for biosemiotics by highlighting the contingent, activity-dependent, and surplus anabolic (negentropic, hyper-restorative) stress mechanisms underlying diversification in eutherian developmental systems and possibly, the epigenetic evolution of pace-of-life syndromes.

生活史的变化定义了关键的比较和进化生物学问题，对于理解哺乳动物进化差异，发育适应性和可塑性的机制很重要。在这一点上，主要的耕种和早熟种之间的差异代表了一个特别重要的意义，即使这种理解和争议仍然存在。在这里，将展示如何根据IA Arshavsky和他的学校的本体论的亲性论，利用比较生理学方法来扩展和综合这种起源变异的经典分析，可以追溯到A. Portmann的语义生物学。在这个鲜为人知但具有开创性的传统中，进行了广泛的比较和实验研究，研究了肌肉骨骼系统和应激源在驱动生命历史变化中的作用，特别是在alteral-precocial频谱中。正如Arshavsky及其同事所展示的那样，通过关注一般的变构规律，基于表面和质量的经典能量规则的近似值提供了有价值的基准，但是这些预测也经常被不同生物之间的生理和代谢比例关系的可变性所破坏。和性早熟，因此，需要一种复杂且历史悠久的方法来描述其局部生理机制和系统规律性。本文说明了Arshavsky的发现和框架如何在这种情况下发挥整合作用，可能有助于弥合波特曼学校开发的语义形态学的主要描述性方法与功能性解释在当前的生态学和生活史理论中的主导地位。这些问题对于生物符号学而言可能是重要的，因为它强调了以太坊发展系统多样化以及生活节奏综合症的表观遗传进化背后潜在的，与活动有关的和过剩的合成代谢（负性，过度修复）应激机制。