{"title":"The illusion of balance in the history of the biosphere","authors":"Geerat J. Vermeij","doi":"10.1111/gbi.12584","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Earth's surface has been irreversibly altered by the activity of organisms, a process that has accelerated as the power of the biosphere (the rate at which life extracts and deploys energy) has increased over time. This trend is incompatible with the expectation that the inputs to Earth's surface of life's materials from the crust and mantle be matched by export from Earth's surface to long-term reservoirs. Here, I suggest that the collective activity of organisms has always violated this balance. The biosphere's ability to extract, retain, recycle, and accumulate materials has allowed living biomass to increase and for exports to decrease over very long timescales. This collective metabolism implies a net transfer of materials from the planet's interior to its surface. The combination of metabolic innovations, competition, adaptive evolution, and the establishment of collaborative economic feedback in ecosystems created dynamic ecological stability despite great spatial and temporal heterogeneity in physical and biological inputs and export of nutrients into and out of the biosphere. Models of geochemical cycling must take the fundamental role of living organisms and the evolutionary changes in these roles into account to explain past and future conditions.</p>","PeriodicalId":173,"journal":{"name":"Geobiology","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Geobiology","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gbi.12584","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Earth's surface has been irreversibly altered by the activity of organisms, a process that has accelerated as the power of the biosphere (the rate at which life extracts and deploys energy) has increased over time. This trend is incompatible with the expectation that the inputs to Earth's surface of life's materials from the crust and mantle be matched by export from Earth's surface to long-term reservoirs. Here, I suggest that the collective activity of organisms has always violated this balance. The biosphere's ability to extract, retain, recycle, and accumulate materials has allowed living biomass to increase and for exports to decrease over very long timescales. This collective metabolism implies a net transfer of materials from the planet's interior to its surface. The combination of metabolic innovations, competition, adaptive evolution, and the establishment of collaborative economic feedback in ecosystems created dynamic ecological stability despite great spatial and temporal heterogeneity in physical and biological inputs and export of nutrients into and out of the biosphere. Models of geochemical cycling must take the fundamental role of living organisms and the evolutionary changes in these roles into account to explain past and future conditions.
期刊介绍:
The field of geobiology explores the relationship between life and the Earth''s physical and chemical environment. Geobiology, launched in 2003, aims to provide a natural home for geobiological research, allowing the cross-fertilization of critical ideas, and promoting cooperation and advancement in this emerging field. We also aim to provide you with a forum for the rapid publication of your results in an international journal of high standing. We are particularly interested in papers crossing disciplines and containing both geological and biological elements, emphasizing the co-evolutionary interactions between life and its physical environment over geological time.
Geobiology invites submission of high-quality articles in the following areas:
Origins and evolution of life
Co-evolution of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere
The sedimentary rock record and geobiology of critical intervals
Paleobiology and evolutionary ecology
Biogeochemistry and global elemental cycles
Microbe-mineral interactions
Biomarkers
Molecular ecology and phylogenetics.