Roots of diversity relations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a thermodynamic explanation for the species-area relationship, viewing ecosystems as energy transduction systems that evolve toward high efficiency, linking species richness to energy distribution and chemical gradients.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic framework explaining the species-area relationship as a consequence of energy transduction efficiency in ecosystems.

Findings

Species-area relationship arises from energy distribution patterns.

Ecosystems evolve toward high efficiency in energy transduction.

Species abundance reflects thermodynamic energy gradients.

Abstract

The species-area relationship is one of the central generalizations in ecology however its origin has remained a puzzle. Since ecosystems are understood as energy transduction systems, the regularities in species richness are considered to result from ubiquitous imperatives in energy transduction. From a thermodynamic point of view, organisms are transduction mechanisms that distribute an influx of energy down along the steepest gradients to the ecosystem's diverse repositories of chemical energy, i.e., populations of species. Transduction machineries, i.e. ecosystems assembled from numerous species, may emerge and evolve toward high efficiency on large areas that hold more matter than small ones. This results in the well-known logistic-like relationship between the area and the number of species. The species-area relationship is understood, in terms of thermodynamics, to be the skewed cumulative curve of chemical energy distribution that is commonly known as the species-abundance relationship.