Describing resources and their relationships with organisms seems to be a useful approach to a ‘unified ecology’, contributing to fill the gap between natural and human oriented processes, and opening new perspectives in dealing with biological complexity. This Resource Criterion defines the main properties of resources, describes the mechanisms that link them to individual species, and gives a particular emphasis to the biosemiotic approach that allows resources to be identified inside a heterogeneous ecological medium adopting the eco-field model. In particular, (...) this Criterion allows to couple matter, structured energy and information composing the ecological systems to the biosemiotic and cognitive mechanisms adopted by individual species to track resources, transforming neutral surroundings into meaningful species-specific Umwelten. The expansion of the human semiotic niche that is a relevant evolutionary process of the present time, assigns the role of powerful and efficient agency to the Resources Criterion to evaluate the effect of human intrusion into the natural systems with habits of key stone species, under the challenge of a growing use of alloctonous, immaterial and symbolic resources of the actual globalized societal models. The Resource Criterion interprets the ecological dynamics contributing to complete the epistemology of the ecology, to open a bridge toward economy and other societal sciences, and to contribute to formulate a General Theory of Resources. (shrink)

Vivoscape, from Latin ‘vivo’ and the English ‘scape’ is presented as a new ecosemiotic agency that integrates the interactions between biological and ecological components of a taxon with the environment. According to this model, the interactions between species and the environment are fused into a new functional unity driven by external and internal events. Sensorial and relational channels are used by a taxon to sense external energy gradients, matter, information and to return actions and proactions in an external operational environment. (...) The eco-field model is suggested as the functional ecosemiotic mechanism associated with each vivoevent. (shrink)

Sound is an inherent component of the environment that provides conditions and information necessary for many animal activities. Soniferous species require specific acoustic and physical conditions suitable for their signals to be transmitted, received, and effectively interpreted to successfully identify and utilize resources in their environment and interact with conspecifics and other heterospecific organisms. We propose the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis to explain how the acoustic environment influences habitat selection of sound-dependent species. We postulate that sound-dependent species select and occupy habitats (...) with unique acoustic characteristics that are essential to their functional needs and conducive to the threshold of sound frequency they produce and detect. These acoustic habitats are based on the composition of biophony, geophony, and technophony in the soundscape and on the biosemiotics mechanisms described in the eco-field hypothesis. The Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis initiates questions of habitat selection that go beyond the physical attributes of the environment by applying ecoacoustics theory. We outline the theoretical basis of the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis and provide examples from the literature to support its assumptions. The concept of acoustic habitats has been documented in the literature for many years but here, we accurately and extensively define acoustic habitat and we put this concept into a unified theory. We also include perspectives on how the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis can stimulate a paradigm shift in conservation strategies for threatened and endangered species. (shrink)

A Rural Sanctuary is defined as an area where farming activity creates habitats for a diverse assemblage of species that find a broad spectrum of resources along the season. A Rural Sanctuary is proposed as a new model of land management to protect nature inside a framework of cultural identity and agro-forestry sustainability. A Rural Sanctuary has a dual mission: to provide immaterial and material resources for people, and to guarantee living spaces to a large assemblage of species. A Rural (...) Sanctuary represents an ecosemiotic agency in which human eco-fields and animal eco-fields interact. This reflects a model that is rooted in the Mediterranean region, where for long time people and nature have harmoniously lived in strict contact and inter-dependence. An example of a Rural Sanctuary from this region is proposed to demonstrate the amazing diversity of living beings observed on only few hectares of farmland. A Rural Sanctuary offers possibilities to educate people about a more sustainable approach to nature, and it represents a unique place to investigate animal perception. Finally, between the different approach to certify the validity of a Rural Sanctuary, sound recording is suggested as one of the less invasive methods for ecological investigation and long-term monitoring. (shrink)

The sounds produced by animals have been a topic of research into animal behaviour for a very long time. If acoustic signals are undoubtedly a vehicle for exchanging information between individuals, environmental sounds embed as well a significant level of data related to the ecology of populations, communities and landscapes. The consideration of environmental sounds for ecological investigations opens up a field of research that we define with the term ecoacoustics. In this paper, we draw the contours of ecoacoustics by (...) detailing: the main theories, concepts and methods used in ecoacoustic research, and the numerous outcomes that can be expected from the ecological approach to sound. Ecoacoustics has several theoretical and practical challenges, but we firmly believe that this new approach to investigating ecological processes will generate abundant and exciting research programs. (shrink)

Acoustic codes assure the intra and interspecific communication of vocal animals. They are composed by a sequence of nominal entities and by magnitude modulation confirming in such a way contemporarily a behavioural and ecological nature. The acoustic codes find evidence in the acoustic niche hypothesis by which species in order to reduce interspecific competition occupy a restricted portion of the available frequencies modulating very precise acoustic cues . Their evolution, like other aspect of biology, is under control of the environmental (...) conditions assuming the more favourable configurations. These nominal entities respond also to the amount of energy by which are emitted allowing to the eavesdropping individuals to range the distance at which a potential competitor is broadcasting a signal. Environmental alterations, especially if of anthropogenic origin, can produce severe consequence of the acoustic codes that in turn may affect the prey–predator balance and the complexity of communities. In fact acoustic codes under an environmental constraint like human noise intrusion can be modified in order to reduce a masking effect, demonstrating their phenological plasticity. The new ecological discipline of soundscape ecology offers the possibility to investigate the nature and the evolution of the acoustic codes in different environmental conditions. (shrink)

Despite an impressive number of investigations and indirect evidence, the mechanisms that link patterns and processes across the landscape remain a debated point. A new definition of landscape as a semiotic interface between resources and organisms opens up a new perspective to a better understanding of such mechanisms. If the landscape is considered a source of signals converted by animal cognition into signs, it follows that spatial configurations, extension, shape and contagion are not only landscape patterns but categories of identifiable (...) signals. The eco-field hypothesis, by which cognitive templates are used to identify spatial configurations as carriers of meaning according to an active function, are combined with the sign theory to create an eco-semiotic model of landscape representation. Signs from landscape change in efficacy according to mechanisms of degradation, and metric sign categories have to be considered. An interdisciplinary coalescence is expected by using the theoretical approach in different fields of conservation and resource management and planning. (shrink)

In hybrid nature that results from a random mix of technological infrastructures and natural ecosystems, environmental fundamentals are modified producing dramatic effects on the semiosis of several species. Human intrusion in ecosystems creates new spatial configurations that have a reduced ecological complexity when compared with systems less affected by human manipulation. This causes cascading effects on other environmental fundamentals. F.i., systems that face a low complexity, are more exposed to changes that in turn can reduce the performances of individual species (...) due to a higher level of uncertainty. The flux of information could be apparently maintained in hybrid nature when some natural patterns and processes are replaced by human artifacts and associated dynamics, but the process of signification could be strongly modified. The strict contact between people and wild organisms in hybrid nature requires new types of strategies to guarantee the continuation of the natural dynamic of populations and communities. Rural sanctuaries are proposed as one of the possible models on which to invest in order to harmonize the technological and natural processes with the goal to assure a multiscale sustainability. (shrink)

The soundscape, which is defined as the entire acoustic environment of an area, is a relevant biosemiotic ingredient of environmental complexity. It is composed of geophonies, anthrophonies, and biophonies where, in temperate biomes, birds are the major producers of the latter. The soundscape is heterogeneous in terms of space and time, and is affected by landscape features such as vegetation cover. It also operates as a communication network in which intra- and inter-specific interactions create a complex, eavesdropping-broadcasting network, namely, the (...) soundtope. This acoustic context provides public information for tracking resources like territory, mates, food, safety, and roosting sites and it can be considered a multifunctional eco-field. The Acoustic Complexity Index is a new metric that is used to efficiently process the sound files that, when collected by sampling matrixes, return by interpolation the spatial distribution of a soundscape. High quality soundscapes are sought to guarantee the biosemiotic mechanisms among species, but polluted conditions degrade and mask biophonies, thus reducing communication efficiency, with severe consequences for both individual and collective fitness. Preserving high quality soundscapes is therefore an important conservation issue and a target to aim for if we are to assure animal and human wellbeing. (shrink)

Biosemiotics to date has focused on the exchange of signals between organisms, in line with bioacoustics; consideration of the wider acoustic environment as a semiotic medium is under-developed. The nascent discipline of ecoacoustics, that investigates the role of environmental sound in ecological processes and dynamics, fills this gap. In this paper we introduce key ecoacoustic terminology and concepts in order to highlight the value of ecoacoustics as a discipline in which to conceptualise and study intra- and interspecies semiosis. We stress (...) the inherently subjective nature of all sensory scapes and propose that they should always bear an organismic attribution. Key terms to describe the sources and scales of soundscapes are described. We introduce epithets for soundscapes to point to the degree to which the global environment is implicated in semiosis ; terms for describing key ecological structures and processes and examples of ecoacoustic events are described. The acoustic eco-field is recognized as the semiotic model that enables soniferous species to intercept core resources like food, safety and roosting places. We note that whilst ecoacoustics to date has focused on the critical task of the development of metrics for application in conservation and biodiversity assessment, these can be enriched by advancing conceptual and theoretical foundations. Finally, the mutual value of integrating ecoacoustic and biosemiotics perspectives is considered. (shrink)

In a development of the ecosemiotic vivo-scape concept, a ‘safety eco-field’ is proposed as a model of a species response to the safety of its environment. The safety eco-field is based on the ecosemiotic approach which considers environmental safety as a resource sought and chosen by individuals to counter predatory pressure. To test the relative safety of different locations within a landscape, 66 bird feeders (BF) were deployed in a regular 15 × 15 m grid in a rural area, surrounded (...) by shrubs, small trees, hedgerows, and buildings. On each of 48 days in November 2021 and February and March 2022, dried mealworms were placed on each BF and counts of larvae at each BF were made at noon and dusk. The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) and the great tit (Parus major) were the most regular visitors to the BFs. Land cover at each BF was recorded. Bird behaviour at the BFs was noted from direct video recordings of the birds at nine selected BFs, totalling 32 daily sessions in March. The different behaviours of the European robin and the great tit were observable. The safety eco-field changed according to the month and the time of day. The distance of the BF from the woodland edges seemed to be important only in the morning. In the afternoon, BFs that were more distant from the woodland edges received the highest number of visits. Weather conditions were found to influence the number of mealworms removed, but this requires further investigation. A significant relationship between land cover and the number of mealworm larvae removed from the BFs was observed. Within the grid of BF, three regions were distinguishable which were related to land cover in the safety eco-field process. The experimental framework confirms the adequacy, at least for birds that have cryptic predators, to map the landscape as a proxy of safety resource. From the video recordings it was noted that the European robin visits were distributed throughout the day without apparent temporal preferences, while the great tit visits were concentrated in the central part of the day. This result has the limitation of the short period of observation (March) and should be extended to the entire period of the experiment to eventually capture seasonal variation. The experimental evidence obtained confirms that the ecosemiotic-based models of safety eco-field are an efficient approach to explain bird feeding preferences and behaviours. (shrink)

The biosemiotic complexity of acoustic communities in the primary forests of Ulu Temburong and Yasunì was investigated with continuous 24-h recordings, using the acoustic signature and multiscale approach of ecoacoustic events and their emergent fractal dimensions. The 3D recordings used for the analysis were collected in undisturbed primary equatorial forests under the scope of the project, Fragments of Extinction, which produces 3D sound portraits with the highest definition possible using current technologies – a perfect dataset on which to perform a (...) multiscale qualitative analysis. The ecoacoustic events detected by a combination of the Acoustic Complexity Indices, ACIft, ACIft evenness, and ACItf evenness, and its fractal dimension were developed according to a biosemiotics approach in which the ecofield theory states that EE functions like a species-specific carrier of meaning. EEs, extracted according to 10 levels of temporal resolution, from 1 to 360 s, confirm the hypothesis that these acoustic communities have an internal complexity that responds to a fractal structure. Yasunì was richer in EEs, with a higher coefficient of variation of hourly fractal dimension. This methodology opens up promising new perspectives in the acoustic assessment of habitat quality and monitoring landscape modification. It also confirms the great potential of the biosemiotics approach in converting acoustic frequencies into ecoacoustic events through encoding procedures that mimic potential species-specific interpretations of the sonic environment. (shrink)

In this essay we argue for the possibility to describe the co-presence of species in a community as a consortium built by acoustic codes, using mainly the examples of bird choruses. In this particular case, the consortium is maintained via the sound-tope that different bird species create by singing in a chorus. More generally, the formation of acoustic codes as well as cohesive communicative systems (the consortia) can be seen as a result of plastic adaptational behaviour of the specimen who (...) can solve and avoid conflicts both with conspecifics and with other species in the vicinity. Thus, sign-relations appear to resolve potential conflicts, and as a foundation for symbiotic aggregations. The spatio-temporal configuration of consortia—their chronotope—includes several eco-fields as respective to different functions of the participating organisms. Biological study is combined with a semiotic approach that, as we suggest, should be more often used together to effectively describe ecological processes. (shrink)

Capturing information means for every organism acquiring knowledge about the living and not living objects that exist in its surroundings. In this way, the “historical” concept of Umwelt, as a subjective surrounding has been recently integrated in the theory of landscape ecology where a landscape is not only a geographical entity but also a cognitive medium. The landscape may be considered a semiotic context used by the organisms to locate resources heterogeneously distributed in space and time. In particular, inside a (...) landscape there are different eco-fields defined as spatial arrangements of objects carrier of meaning that organisms utilize to track resources. Along this epistemic path the sonic component of the landscape is an important carrier of information commonly used by the majority of animal species to managing many vital functions. In particular birds, which are animals with a complex system of acoustic communication, seem to organize acoustic centers for public information. These sonic patterns (soundtopes) are characterized by a great variability in space and time and function like a special eco-field that allows species to share information about the status of resources and the dynamics of populations. The availability of such public information avoids a deeper and more expensive exploration of the environment to assess its quality. (shrink)

An ecological description of a landscape transcends its geographical definition to characterize it in terms of a complex agency composed of a spatial mosaic, structured energy, information and meaning. Because the dimensions of the landscape encompasses both natural and human processes, it requires a more robust set of theories that incorporate the material components and their perceptual meaning. A biosemiotic approach defines the landscape as the sum of its organisms’ eco-fields, which are spatial configurations that carry meanings connected to specific (...) needs and related functions. In this perspective, the new postulated General Theory of Resources, offers a substantial contribution to complete the paradigmatic framework of a “private landscape” species-, individual- and function-specific. From this theory resources are considered every material (f.i. food) or immaterial elements (f.i. safety) necessary to fullfill individual needs. The habitat becomes the “private landscape” and the well-being versus the ill-being are the emergent conditions of each individual under the environmental constraints. Definitively space is the entity on which material and immaterial resources are distributed and the dimension on which individuals species are interacting by using biosemiotic mechanisms. (shrink)