The life-span of particular species varies from minutes to the age of Sequoia trees estimated a at 3000 to 4000 years. The size of species varies from microscopic to the volume and weight of these same trees. Millions of species of existing life-forms are presently found only on Earth. Artifacts lead to the supposition that even greater millions of species have become extinct. Estimates of living species are as high as twenty million, and the number of extinct species is thought to be many times that number.
Developmental state is a kind of temporal slice through the life cycle.
If we are guided by the notion of information as the difference that makes a difference, then what developmental inter-actant makes a difference depends on what is developing and how. It is in this sense that organisms generate information, and it is in much the same sense that scientists do. Events do not carry already existing information about their effects from one place to the next, the way we used to think copies of objects had to travel to our minds for us to perceive them. They are given meaning by what they distinguish. A difference that makes a difference at one level of analysis, furthermore, may or may not make a difference at another.