Deasy’s Taxonomia Vitae – Final operational classification record

Field	Classification question
1. Unit	What biological system is being bounded?
2. State	At what life-history or metabolic state?
3. Environment	What boundary conditions apply?
4. Free-energy source	Light or chemical free energy?
5. Acquisition interface	How is the resource captured?
6. Energy identity	Phototroph, chemotroph, or flexible?
7. Electron source	Lithotroph, organotroph, mixed, electrotrophic modifier?
8. Carbon source	Autotroph, heterotroph, or mixotroph?
9. Electron disposition	Respiration, fermentation, cyclic flow, export, or assimilation?
10. Transduction	What conversion mechanism is used?
11. Conservation	Chemiosmosis, substrate-level phosphorylation, bifurcation, etc.?
12. Immediate energetic state	ATP, ion motive force, reducing power, activated intermediates?
13. Matter assimilation	What carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and minerals enter biomass?
14. Functional allocation	Maintenance, growth, reproduction, movement, defense, control, external work?
15. Storage	What reserves or buffers are used?
16. Temporal strategy	Continuous, pulsed, cyclic, dormant, or opportunistic?
17. Developmental state	Provisioned, dependent, growing, reproductive, dormant, senescent, etc.?
18. Dependency architecture	Self-sufficient, cross-fed, syntrophic, symbiotic, parasitic?
19. Ecological role	Producer, consumer, parasite, detritivore, decomposer, engineer?
20. Outputs	Biomass, offspring, metabolites, waste, terminal products, heat?
21. Postmortem fate	Scavenging, decomposition, mineralization, or sequestration?
22. Plasticity	Which classifications change with stage or environment?

The complete energetic identity can therefore be expressed as:

Energetic profile= [unit and state] +[free-energy source] +[capture interface] +[electron, carbon, and acceptor identity] +[conversion and conservation] +[matter assimilation] +[allocation and storage] +[temporal and ontogenetic strategy] +[dependency and ecological role] +[outputs, death, and final fate]

That is the actual corrected layout: from the physical opportunity preceding metabolism, through cellular conversion, organismal expenditure, every recurring life-history state, biological transfer, death, decomposition, and ecosystem-scale dissipation.