Life’s Energy and Information: Contrasting Evolution of Volume- versus Surface-Specific Rates of Energy Consumption

As humanity struggles to find a path to resilience amidst global change vagaries, understanding organizing principles of living systems as the pillar for human existence is rapidly growing in importance. However, finding quantitative definitions for order, complexity, information and functionality of living systems remains a challenge. Here, we review and develop insights into this problem from the concept of the biotic regulation of the environment developed by Victor Gorshkov (1935–2019). Life’s extraordinary persistence—despite being a strongly non-equilibrium process—requires a quantum-classical duality: the program of life is written in molecules and thus can be copied without information loss, while life’s interaction with its non-equilibrium environment is performed by macroscopic classical objects (living individuals) that age. Life’s key energetic parameter, the volume-specific rate of energy consumption, is maintained within universal limits by most life forms. Contrary to previous suggestions, it cannot serve as a proxy for “evolutionary progress”. In contrast, ecosystem-level surface-specific energy consumption declines with growing animal body size in stable ecosystems. High consumption by big animals is associated with instability. We suggest that the evolutionary increase in body size may represent a spontaneous loss of information about environmental regulation, a manifestation of life’s algorithm ageing as a whole.