Entropy law in aquatic communities and the general entropy principle for the development of living systems

Abstract

The study of entropy production is significant for understanding nature of complex and functional systems from non-reductionistic viewpoints. The present paper provides a property of entropy production for aquatic communities (lakes and estuaries) using data of biomass and respiration in trophic compartments in 18 aquatic food webs in Africa, Israel, Japan and America. It is shown that entropy production in aquatic communities has a characteristic property: early increase and later decrease with time. This property is supported by various other living systems: human body, swine and lake-ecosystems. It may be generalized to be universal for overall time course of biotic systems from organisms to ecosystems, and named as “early increasing-later decreasing entropy production principle” or “Min–Max principle of entropy production (MMEP)”. Also, some small-scale behaviors of entropy production during short period of time are presented.