Resource Management

Anabolism

Anabolism is building up. It's synthesis, construction, growth. When your body builds muscle from protein, that's anabolism. When a plant converts car...

Apical Dominance

Notice how a tree has one main trunk shooting upward, with smaller side branches? That's not random - it's apical dominance, and it's a brilliant reso...

ATP

Every organism on Earth - from bacteria to blue whales - runs on the same energy currency: ATP. Adenosine triphosphate. It's a molecule so fundamental...

Auxin Gradient

Auxin is the plant hormone responsible for phototropic bending, discovered by Frits Went in 1926. When phototropins on the lit side of a stem activate...

Branch Abscission

Plants prune themselves through branch abscission - deliberate shedding of branches. Three triggers: (1) Shade-induced abscission: lower branches rece...

Burn Rate

Metabolic rate is the single most important number determining whether an organism survives. How fast do you convert resources into activity? How much...

Caching

Distributed storage scatters resources across multiple locations. Squirrels bury 5,000-10,000 acorns across hundreds of sites, jays hide seeds, leopar...

Calibrated Storage

The organism that survives isn't the most efficient or the most protected - it's the one that calibrates storage to resource criticality and environme...

Caloric Restriction

Caloric restriction is the reduction of calorie intake without malnutrition - nutrients balanced, just fewer total calories. A C. elegans nematode wor...

Capillary Action

Secondary mechanism for water movement. Water molecules adhere to xylem walls (hydrogen bonding to cellulose), cohere to each other, and 'climb' narro...

Catabolism

Catabolism is breaking down. It's degradation, deconstruction, harvesting. When your body breaks down fat stores during a fast, that's catabolism. Whe...

Central Place Foraging

Central place foraging describes optimization when organisms must return to a fixed location (birds with nests, bees with hives). This changes the for...

Cohesion-Adhesion Theory

Cohesion: Hydrogen bonds between water molecules create tensile strength of approximately 30 megapascals - strong enough to withstand the pulling forc...

Conglomerate Discount

Specialists outperform generalists when niches are stable. The anteater's specialized tongue and claws make it unbeatable at ant extraction—but useles...

Cotyledon Dependency

When a seed germinates, its first leaves aren't true leaves. They're cotyledons - embryonic leaves that were packed inside the seed containing stored...

Counter-Cyclical Capital

Business application of biological bet-hedging principles, where organisms invest resources counter to current environmental conditions to prepare for...

Cross-Docking Distribution

Decomposition Cascade

Decomposition isn't a single process - it's a cascade of specialized organisms breaking down progressively more recalcitrant materials. Stage 1: Scave...

Decomposition Nutrient Liberation

The decomposer economy consists of organisms specialized to break down dead organic matter: bacteria, fungi, insects, worms, and scavengers. These org...

Detrital Loop

In many ecosystems, decomposition controls productivity more than primary production (photosynthesis) does. This is the detrital loop or brown food we...

Diet Selection

Diet selection theory predicts that organisms should include a food item in their diet if: Energy gained from item / (Search time + Handling time) > C...

Energy Budget Allocation

The three-way trade-off between survival, growth, and reproduction represents a fixed energy budget that every organism must allocate. Survival costs...

Fat Storage

Grizzly bears gain 3-4 pounds per day during hyperphagia (August-October), adding 150-200 pounds of fat over 8-10 weeks. Costs include mobility reduct...

Functional Complementarity

Different species use resources in different ways, reducing competition and increasing total resource capture. Plant species root at different depths...

Geographic Migration

Evolution independently discovered migration in unrelated lineages (birds, fish, mammals, insects). This convergent evolution suggests migration solve...

Gravitropism

Gravitropism is directional growth in response to gravity - roots grow down (positive gravitropism) while shoots grow up (negative gravitropism). This...

Growth Allocation

A seedling has limited photosynthetic energy. Where should it allocate? To roots (accessing water/nutrients), to shoots (capturing light), to defenses...

Hibernation & Reserve Strategy

Hibernation is not sleep. Sleep is neural rest. Hibernation is controlled metabolic suppression - a systemic shutdown of energy consumption while main...

Hoarding

Centralized storage accumulates resources in a single defended location. Hamsters store seeds in burrows, bees store honey in hives, ants store food i...

Hybrid Storage Strategy

Squirrels demonstrate hybrid strategy: they cache acorns (critical winter food) while also consuming fungi, insects, and tree sap immediately (availab...

Hyperphagia

A grizzly bear in late summer doesn't eat like a normal animal. It eats like a creature possessed. Up to 20,000 calories daily - ten times normal inta...

Immediate Use Strategy

Some organisms use short-term buffering rather than long-term storage. Pigeons use crops (expandable esophageal pouches) for 1-2 day storage, carrying...

Life History Trade-offs

Every organism receives a fixed amount of energy from food. That energy must be allocated across three competing demands: (1) Survival/Somatic Mainten...

Litter Layer Dynamics

In most terrestrial ecosystems, dead organic matter accumulates in a litter layer that functions as a nutrient reservoir. The litter layer creates tem...

Marginal Value Theorem

The marginal value theorem, formalized by Eric Charnov in 1976, predicts when organisms should leave a resource patch. The principle states: Leave a p...

Metabolic Scaling

Consider your burn rate. Every venture capitalist obsesses over it. 'How many months of runway do you have?' they ask, as if they invented the questio...

Metabolic Suppression

Metabolic suppression is the core mechanism of hibernation - a systemic reduction in energy consumption across all body systems. In grizzly bears, thi...

Metabolism

In biology textbooks, metabolism gets reduced to a simple definition: the sum of all chemical reactions in a living organism. That's accurate but bloo...

Mineralization

Mineralization is the conversion of organic nutrients into inorganic mineral forms that plants can use. Proteins become amino acids, then ammonia, the...

Murray's Law

In 1926, Cecil Murray discovered that evolution had solved an optimization problem across millions of species independently. At every branching point...

Mycorrhizal Decomposition Pipeline

Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic partnerships with plant roots, extending the decomposition economy directly into the plant uptake system. Ectomycorrh...

Negative Cash Conversion Cycle

Not applicable - this is a business mechanism. However, it parallels organisms that consume resources immediately rather than storing them, using the...

Optimal Foraging Theory

Optimal foraging theory, developed by ecologists in the 1960s-70s, predicts how organisms should forage to maximize energy intake per unit time. Forag...

Parental Investment Trade-offs

Red deer in Scotland demonstrate age-dependent parental investment trade-offs. Young mothers (2-4 years, many breeding seasons ahead) reduce milk prod...

Phloem Transport

Phloem transports sugars from leaves to roots/fruit. Direction: Bidirectional (can flow up or down based on source-sink dynamics). Mechanism: Pressure...

Phototropism

Phototropism is the ability to detect a resource gradient and allocate growth asymmetrically to move toward it. When light hits one side of a plant st...

Resource Allocation

Every organism faces a fundamental constraint: limited energy. You can't spend the same calorie twice. This creates trade-offs - perhaps the starkest...

Risk-Sensitive Foraging

Risk-sensitive foraging theory explains why organisms switch between risk-averse and risk-seeking strategies based on energy reserves. When well-fed (...

Root Death Cycle

Fine roots (the tiny absorptive roots that actually pull water and nutrients) live for weeks to months in tropical species, or up to 1-2 years in some...

Root-to-Shoot Ratio

Photosynthesis happens above ground. But plants allocate 30-60% of the energy they capture to growing and maintaining roots. In resource-limited envir...

Semelparous Strategy

Some species go extreme: Pacific salmon grow rapidly for years, then make one massive reproductive effort (swim upstream, spawn, die). They're semelpa...

Shade Avoidance Syndrome

When a seedling detects it's under dense canopy (2% full sunlight), it triggers etiolation: stems elongate 3-5× faster than normal, leaves stay small,...

Source-Sink Dynamics

Not all habitats are equal. In source populations occupying high-quality habitat, births exceed deaths - the population grows and exports surplus indi...

Storage Economics

Every organism faces the calculation of when to consume resources immediately versus storing them for later. Storage incurs costs: energy expenditure...

Transpiration Pull

Water evaporates from leaf surfaces through microscopic openings called stomata (tiny pores in leaves, approximately 300 per square millimeter). Each...

Xylem Transport

Xylem transports water and minerals from roots to leaves. Direction: Upward only (unidirectional). Mechanism: Transpiration pull (evaporation-driven s...