All development and succession of ecosystems is the result of evolution

The development and succession of ecosystems is led by evolution. In another words, all the present ecosystems is the result of evolution, it is like a mirror, reflecting the life evolution history and reminding us to remember the evolution route all the life has passed. Although there is a lot of life mystery hidden behind the earth and the life itself, as Gaia hypothesis [1-2] pointed early, if we remember that what we see today is the result what life experienced before, we will be more appreciated with what the earth provide us now, and more carefully to conduct our action, because today’s action is the result in future http://www.cusabio.com/.

It is known that different life types (patterns) emerged in different geological era. This “history book” is always opened on the earth. Various ecosystem types tell us the various evolution stories. For example, the prokaryotes in ocean tell us the origin of life and the form of earliest life, while the tropical rain forest tells us the pattern of most recent life. Table 1 presented a simplified list on the correspondence relation between life evolution history and present biological ecosystems. The main evolution route is from aquatic ecosystem to terrestrial ecosystem. Among the aquatic ecosystem, the evolution route is from plankton food web (pelagic food web) to demersal and benthic food webs. While in terrestrial ecosystem, the evolution route is from boreal forest to temperate deciduous forest.

Soil food web, as the decomposer of the forest and grassland ecosystems, its evolution route was a cooperating process with organic detritus provided by aboveground plants. Soil ecosystem is a huge “black box”, with which, our knowledge is very limited. Although Lovelock cognized that the geo-chemical environment was controlled by life, but he also pointed out that the process was very complicated and was not easy to reveal the truth.

What is the driven force for the development of ecosystem? Since all energy and materials in ecosystem originated from solar radiation, can we say that solar radiation energy is the driven force for ecosystem’s succession? If it is, then, what is the terminal “objective” for ecosystem succession? Is it to improve the energy utilization efficiency? If it is, then, the biological community emerged in later geological era should has higher energy utilization efficiency than the community emerged earlier.

The objective of this article is to test this suppose. I selected typical ecosystems as representatives of the biosphere, take the ecosystem as unit (because biological community has a cooperating evolution relation with its environment, it is more rational to use ecosystem as an unit than biological community), by calculating and comparing the energy utilization efficiency of various ecosystems, and analyzing the relationship between ecosystem’s energy utilization efficiency and food web structure, to prove the basic hypothesis: life evolution route is the process of elevating energy efficiency. The ultimate objective of an ecosystem is to improve its energy utilization efficiency.

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