Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543; email:
Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B2H 4R2, Canada; email:
Ann Rev Mar Sci. 2016;8:333-56. doi: 10.1146/annurev-marine-010814-015843. Epub 2015 Oct 28.
Nearly 100 years ago, Alfred Lotka published two short but insightful papers describing how ecosystems may organize. Principally, Lotka argued that ecosystems will grow in size and that their cycles will spin faster via predation and nutrient recycling so as to capture all available energy, and that evolution and natural selection are the mechanisms by which this occurs and progresses. Lotka's ideas have often been associated with the maximum power principle, but they are more consistent with recent developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, which assert that complex systems will organize toward maximum entropy production (MEP). In this review, we explore Lotka's hypothesis within the context of the MEP principle, as well as how this principle can be used to improve marine biogeochemistry models. We need to develop the equivalent of a climate model, as opposed to a weather model, to understand marine biogeochemistry on longer timescales, and adoption of the MEP principle can help create such models.
大约 100 年前，阿尔弗雷德·洛特卡（Alfred Lotka）发表了两篇简短但富有洞察力的论文，描述了生态系统可能的组织方式。洛特卡主要认为，生态系统的规模会增长，通过捕食和营养物质循环，其循环会加速，以捕获所有可用的能量，而进化和自然选择是实现和推进这一过程的机制。洛特卡的思想经常与最大功率原理联系在一起，但它们与非平衡热力学的最新发展更为一致，该理论断言复杂系统将朝着最大熵产生（MEP）的方向组织。在这篇综述中，我们在 MEP 原理的背景下探讨了洛特卡假说，以及如何利用这一原理来改进海洋生物地球化学模型。我们需要开发出类似于气候模型而不是天气模型的模型，以便在更长的时间尺度上理解海洋生物地球化学，而采用 MEP 原理可以帮助创建这样的模型。
