Empirical clues about the fulfillment of quantum principles in ecology: Potential meaning and theoretical challenges

A new and wide area of theoretical and methodological overlap between ecology and conventional physics has emerged from the development of an ecological state equation and its consequences. Specifically, the discontinuous (discrete) increase of the ecological equivalent (ke) of Boltzmann's constant (kB) suggests a startling hypothesis: most general principles of quantum mechanics could be valid at the ecosystem level. In this paper, we show a single result supported on previous theoretical results as well as on already published data: that a significant and robust straight line adjustment with an intercept at the coordinate's origin between the mean value of eco-kinetic energy per individual and ke at the inter-taxocenosis scale has a regression constant (slope) whose mantissa coincides with the Planck's constant mantissa at the 1000th level. From this result, we propose two simple equations, with increasing exactness, to assess the expected mean values of individual eco-kinetic energy per survey at the inter-taxocenosis level with a reliable statistical adjustment in comparison with the respective observed values. This result means that the evolutionary process as a whole could be understood as a “staggered propulsion” of a tiny initial clot of life that has been ecologically driven across a discontinuous evolutionary gradient of exchange of information by trophic energy with an increment rate ruled by constant quantum parameters. The potential meaning of this finding for evolutionary ecology and our understanding of the ecosystem functioning is analyzed, and the future challenges to develop a holistic theoretical framework based on this result are stated.