The efficiency paradox: How wasteful competitors forge thrifty ecosystems

Abstract

Organic waste, an inevitable byproduct of metabolism, increases in amount as metabolic rates (per capita power) of animals and plants rise. Most of it is recycled within aerobic ecosystems, but some is lost to the system and is sequestered in the crust for millions of years. Here, I identify and resolve a previously overlooked paradox concerning the long-term loss of organic matter. In this efficiency paradox, high-powered species are inefficient in that they release copious waste, but the ecosystems they inhabit lose almost no organic matter. Systems occupied by more efficient low-powered species suffer greater losses because of less efficient recycling. Over Phanerozoic time, ecosystems have become more productive and increasingly efficient at retaining and redistributing organic matter even as opportunistic and highly competitive producers and consumers gained power and became less efficient. These patterns and trends are driven by natural selection at the level of individuals and coherent groups, which favors winners that are more powerful, active, and wasteful. The activities of these competitors collectively create conditions that are increasingly conducive to more efficient recycling and retention of organic matter in the ecosystem.

Power, competition, and the nature of history

“…Because the carbon is not buried in geological reservoirs, this activity would be invisible in the fossil record. If the efficiency of recycling has risen over geological time, as I argue elsewhere (Vermeij 2019), the increase in primary productivity over time is likely to have been far greater than currently available estimates indicate.…”

“…For example, herbivores often stimulate productivity of their plant foods (e.g., Doughty 2017), sharks promote reef nutrition (Williams et al 2018), burrowing bivalves increase oxygenation and sediment productivity (Camillini et al 2019), and cod predation stimulates production in smaller fish prey (Van Leeuwen et al 2008), among many others. Nutrient recycling by decomposers, detritivores, herbivores, and predators stabilizes and enhances the availability of nutrients, and is thus a collective property of ecosystems (Vermeij 2019) that both enables and is stimulated by increasingly powerful competitors.…”

Beyond functional diversity: The importance of trophic position to understanding functional processes in community evolution

“…It is possible that large body size necessitates participation in short food chains to achieve greater ecological efficiency and sustain larger body masses, but further work is required to evaluate this hypothesis. These lines of evidence taken together suggest that while the Aptian and Anisian had a similar balance of short and long chains, these communities were energetically distinct and likely functioned very differently from one another given the role of powerful top consumers in mobilizing and recycling nutrients in their ecosystems (Vermeij, 2019). Future work should focus on the specific effect that large, vigorous consumers have on community network structure and dynamics.…”

The illusion of balance in the history of the biosphere

“…In the case of cetaceans, the magnitude of animal-mediated nutrient fluxes rivals or exceeds nutrient inputs from upwelling and major rivers (Gilbert et al, 2023). By transporting nutrients and preventing them from being buried or sequestered in habitats inaccessible to most organisms, mobile organisms enhance productivity in what would otherwise be unproductive environments such as the terrestrial Arctic, the Southern Ocean, and deserts (Savoca et al, 2021;Vermeij, 2019a). Although these stimulatory effects might be globally minor (Boyce, Ibarra, Nelsen, & D'Antonio, 2023), they are regionally important in ecosystems where primary productivity is The processes affecting inputs and export of materials necessary for life have varied dramatically over the course of Earth history.…”

“…Organisms, together with the preservation of organic matter in biologically modified iron and clay minerals, oxygenated the atmosphere and oceans (Shang, 2023;Shang et al, 2022;Zhao et al, 2023). Carbon has accumulated in the crust (Hayes & Waldbauer, 2006), and the quantity of living biomass has vastly increased over time because of ever more efficient retention and recycling of carbon and other nutrients in the biosphere (Vermeij, 2019a;Wang, Algeo, et al, 2023), with the cooperative development of a circular economy comprising primary producers, consumers, and decomposers (Vermeij, 2019b(Vermeij, , 2023. Positive feedbacks in the biosphere have created conditions favorable to an increasingly reliable and accessible supply of, and demand for, the materials and energy required for life's metabolism, enabling the collective power of organisms to control and modify transfers of material and energy resources to an expanding biosphere.…”