Witting Lars
Greenland Institute of Natural Resources Nuuk Greenland.
Ecol Evol. 2017 Sep 27;7(21):9098-9118. doi: 10.1002/ece3.3432. eCollection 2017 Nov.
I show that the natural selection of metabolism and mass can select for the major life-history and allometric transitions that define lifeforms from viruses, over prokaryotes and larger unicells, to multicellular animals. The proposed selection is driven by a mass-specific metabolism that is selected as the pace of the resource handling that generates net energy for self-replication. An initial selection of mass is given by a dependence of mass-specific metabolism on mass in replicators that are close to a lower size limit. A sublinear maximum dependence selects for virus-like replicators, with no intrinsic metabolism, no cell, and practically no mass. A superlinear dependence selects for prokaryote-like self-replicating cells, with asexual reproduction and incomplete metabolic pathways. These self-replicators have selection for increased net energy, and this generates a gradual unfolding of population-dynamic feed-back selection from interactive competition. The incomplete feed-back selects for larger unicells with more developed metabolic pathways, and the completely developed feed-back for multicellular animals with sexual reproduction. This model unifies the natural selection of lifeforms from viruses to multicellular animals, and it provides a parsimonious explanation where allometries and major life histories evolve from the natural selection of metabolism and mass.
我证明，新陈代谢和质量的自然选择能够促成主要的生命史以及异速生长转变，这些转变界定了从病毒、原核生物、大型单细胞生物到多细胞动物的生命形式。所提出的选择是由质量特异性新陈代谢驱动的，这种新陈代谢被选为资源处理的速度，为自我复制产生净能量。质量的初始选择取决于接近较小尺寸极限的复制子中质量特异性新陈代谢对质量的依赖性。亚线性最大依赖性选择无内在新陈代谢、无细胞且几乎无质量的类病毒复制子。超线性依赖性选择具有无性繁殖和不完全代谢途径的类原核生物自我复制细胞。这些自我复制子会选择增加净能量，这会从互动竞争中逐渐展开种群动态反馈选择。不完全反馈选择具有更发达代谢途径的更大单细胞生物，而完全发展的反馈选择有性繁殖的多细胞动物。该模型统一了从病毒到多细胞动物的生命形式的自然选择，并提供了一个简洁的解释，即异速生长和主要生命史如何从新陈代谢和质量的自然选择中演化而来。
