The metabolic economics of environmental adaptation

Abstract

Applying biological versions of the Data Rate Theorem and the Arrhenius reaction rate relation, it becomes clear that the search-and-response feedback of developmental selection associated with phenotypic plasticity requires a significant rate of metabolic free energy. Too rapid change in environmental conditions, often coupled with decline in available sources of metabolic free energy, leads to highly punctuated local extinction events. The observed dynamic is likely to be that the animal seems to adapt to environmental alterations for a long time, but then, and quite suddenly, developmental selection fails, leading to local extirpation of the reproducing population. Conversely, mosaicking, by imposing selection demands associated with diversity in time, space, and mode – as in traditional and conservation agricultures – can create energy barriers limiting the evolution and spread of pest or pathogen populations.