Biodiversity and models of evolution

Abstract

Summary. The paper discusses the evolutionary impact of biodiversity, the backbone of noosphere, which status has been fixed by a UN convention. The examples and role of such diversity are considered the various levels of life arrangement. On the level of standalone organisms, the diversity in question manifests itself in the differentiation and separation of the key physiologic functions which significantly broaden the eco-niche for the species with the consummate type of such separation. However, the organismic level of biodiversity does not work for building any developmental models since the starting point of genetic inheritance and variability processes emerges on the minimum structural unit of the living world only, i.e. the population. It is noted that the sufficient gene pool for species development may accumulate in fairly large populations only, where the general rate of mutation does not yield to the rate of ambient variations. The paper shows that the known formal models of species development based on the Fisher theorem about the impact of genodispersion on species adjustment are not in keeping with the actual existence of the species due to the conventionally finite and steady number of genotypes within a population. On the ecosystem level of life arrangement, the key role pertains to the taxonomic diversity supporting the continuous food chain in the system against any adverse developmental conditions of certain taxons. Also, the progressive evolution of an ecosystem is largely stabilized by its multilayer hierarchic structure and the closed circle of matter and energy. The developmental system models based on the Lotka-Volterra equations describing the interaction of the open-loop ecosystem elements only insufficiently represent the position of biodiversity in the evolutionary processes. The paper lays down the requirements to such models which take into account the mass balance within a system; its trophic structure; the accumulative (buffering) properties of each ecosystem layer; the multiple interconnections among the ecosystem species; and the restricting impact of the intraspecific and interspecific competition. From this perspective, the use of bio-cybernetic concepts and mathematic tools looks quite promising.