The Evolution of Power: A New Understanding of the History of Life

“The history of life on Earth can be meaningfully and informatively interpreted as a history of power,” according to this thought-provoking study. Vermeij (A Natural History of Shells), an Earth and planetary sciences professor at UC Davis, argues that organisms’ “power”—defined as “energy per unit time” and encompassing mobility, size, speed, and strength—drives natural selection, with more powerful organisms more effective at passing on their genes than the less powerful. Exploring how living things store and release energy for evolutionary advantage, he explains that the Pacific salmon’s body mass is 60% swimming muscle, which enables it to swim six feet per second in short bursts to escape predators, and that the herb Cardamine hirsuta gradually accrues “potential energy” through the valved structure of its fruit, which eventually “springs open as the valves separate” and projects its seeds about two meters. Though Vermeij’s thesis is more of a rebranding of “survival of the fittest” than a novel take on evolution, his framework offers intriguing new insights, as when he contends that ecosystems operate like self-regulating economies in their exchanges of power and energy as part of a competition for resources. This provides plenty to ponder. (Nov.)