Natural selection favors only some species based on their metabolism rate

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Washington, Nov 4 : A new research by ecologists has determined that natural selection favors only some species based on their rate of metabolism, meaning how fast a species consumes energy, per unit mass, per unit time.

A team from the University of California (UC) Riverside undertook the research.

The researchers studied 3006 species, the largest number of species ever analyzed in a single study. The species list encompasses much of the range of biological diversity on Earth - from bacteria to elephants, and algae to sapling trees.

To the researchers' surprise, they found that the mean metabolic rate of the species at rest fell on a narrow range of values - 0.3 to 9 Watts per kilogram.

"This narrow range is in dramatic contrast to the 20 orders of magnitude difference in the body mass of the species we studied," said Bai-Lian Li, a professor of ecology at UC Riverside, who led the study along with two colleagues.

"At physiological rest, the biosphere appears to run, on average, predominantly at the optimal rate defined by this narrow range of values. This remarkable phenomenon is likely associated with the pervasive biochemical universality of living matter, and could provide us with clues to understanding how life is organized," he added.

According to Li, the metabolic optimum explains the ubiquitous and seemingly unrelated features of life organization we see all around us - complex adaptations such as animal breathing and flat, green leaves.

"Organisms whose designs fit the physiological window have been favored by natural selection across all of life's major kingdoms," he said. "This observed, narrow range might therefore be considered as the preferred, optimal range for the functioning of living matter as a whole," he added.

Unlike the genetic code and protein composition, metabolic rate cannot be inherited from a common ancestor. Rather, a particular range of metabolic rates is maintained by natural selection.

"Species had to invent diverse tricks to remain near the metabolic optimum, from which the progressive evolutionary increase in body size - from prokaryotes to largest vertebrates and plants - was continually taking them away," Li said.

ANI

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