Life and the five biological laws. Lessons for global change models and sustainability

doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2019.02.001

Ecological Complexity

Volume 38, April 2019, Pages 11-14

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecocom.2019.02.001 Get rights and content

Highlights

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We here define five laws to explain biological processes and complexity of life.
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Life on Earth is the result of a continuous accumulation of information.
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Biological processes cannot exceed natural limits of size and rates.
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They are constrained by space, matter and energy.
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These laws will help us to model and manage our environmental.

Abstract

Life on Earth is the result of a continuous accumulation of information by combination and innovation using endo- (inside the organism) and exosomatic (outside the organism) energy. Sustenance occurs through cycles of life and death. We here define five life laws for these vital processes. These processes cannot exceed natural limits of size and rates because they are constrained by space, matter and energy; biology builds on what is possible within these physicochemical limits. Learning from the way nature deals with the accumulation of information, the limits of size and the rates at which life can acquire and expend energy and resources for maintenance, growth and competition will help us to model and manage our environmental future and sustainability.

Section snippets

Life is a ride on matter and energy through space subject to selective pressure

Earth's life is complex and diverse. Life on Earth consists of discontinuous individuals belonging to millions of species. Life is the result of evolutionary processes acting on a continuous accumulation of structural and functional information by combination and innovation in the use of matter and endo- and exosomatic energy and on discontinuous processes of death and destruction that recycle the materials that form structure, information and energy compounds, such as proteins, DNA and ATP,

…but life is also a continuous asymmetric accumulation of information

Ecology has been especially interested in these flows and budgets of energy and matter since the late nineteenth century (Schrödinger, 1944; Vernadsky, 1926; Lindeman, 1991; Odum, 1968), understanding ecology as the study of flows of energy and matter, which is why ``physics sets the limits on life but biology is how it is done”. Some researchers such as Margalef (1997), however, highlighted in the 1960s the importance of the third Aristotelian principle: form, or structure, reinterpreted as

Life laws

Physics has universal laws. Biology is envious because it is perceived not to have universal laws. They just seem to be overlooked. Very few laws may in fact explain life on Earth. The five most prominent laws pertinent to life and ecology (Fig. 1) are:

1
The law of mass conservation (introduced by Lomonosov and Lavoisier).
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The first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.
3
The second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of any isolated system always

Lessons for life modeling and sustainability

These laws and principles suggest Bayesian priors and relationships for traits, structure and function of organisms and ecosystems, and thus put us closer to what model parameters may and may not be. Both Earth system and integrated assessment models (ESMs and IAMs) should take these general ecological laws into account, mostly as principles that set the limits of space, matter, and energy, and the evolution of the asymmetrical accumulation of information through ``compound-interest”

Acknowledgments

The authors’ research is funded by the European Research Council Synergy grant SyG-2013-610028 IMBALANCE-P, the Spanish Government project CGL2016-79835-P, the Catalan Government project SGR 2017-1005, and the AmeriFlux Management Project of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

Data accessiblity

No data was used in the preparation of this essay manuscript

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Short NoteLife and the five biological laws. Lessons for global change models and sustainability

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

Life is a ride on matter and energy through space subject to selective pressure

…but life is also a continuous asymmetric accumulation of information

Life laws

Lessons for life modeling and sustainability

Acknowledgments

Data accessiblity

Bull. Math. Biol.

Math. Comput. Model.

The physics and ecology of mining carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by ecosystems

Glob. Change Biol.

Selfish Gene

Punctuated Equilibrium

Plants on a different scale

Nature

Statistical independence of escalatory ecological trends in Phanerozoic marine invertebrates

Science

Our Biosphere

Short Note
Life and the five biological laws. Lessons for global change models and sustainability