From Semiotic Fitting to Semiotic Collapse: A Multi-Level Process Model of Extinction
Abstract
Abstract Extinction is usually analysed as a terminal event at the population level: populations decline, fall below their viability thresholds, and disappear. We propose an alternative framework that reconceives extinction as the gradual collapse of semiotic systems — the recognition-based bonds through which organisms interpret their environment. Drawing on Kull's theory of semiotic fitting (2020, 2022), we introduce Semiotic Overlap (SO) as a measurable index of the structural alignment between an organism's interpretive system and its ecological environment. SO breaks down into three components: SO_I (informational alignment between cue and outcome), SO_B (within-population behavioural dispersion), and SO_C (structural coherence of the cue network). From these we derive five formal propositions, each operationalised so that it can be tested against open-access ecological datasets. The framework was applied to nine independent systems spanning six biological kingdoms and three continents: a prokaryote (the Baltic Sea bacterial community), a plant ( Boechera stricta ), an insect ( Operophtera brumata ), a fish ( Oncorhynchus nerka ), an amphibian ( Triturus cristatus , across five populations), a reptile (marine turtles), a bird ( Parus major ), and two mammals ( Lepus americanus and Lutra lutra ). Composite SO ranged from 0.35 to 0.68 across the systems, ordering them by phase of collapse rather than by taxonomy. In O. brumata , SO acted as a leading indicator of…
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