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Semiotic Mechanisms Underlying Niche Construction

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Abstract

The explanatory value of niche construction can be strengthened by firm footing in semiotic theory. Anthropologists have a unique perspective on the integration of such diverse approaches to human action and evolutionary processes. Here, we seek to open a dialogue between anthropology and biosemiotics. The overarching aim of this paper is to demonstrate that niche construction, including the underlying mechanism of reciprocal causation, is a semiotic process relating to biological development (sensu stricto) as well as cognitive development and cultural change. In making this argument we emphasize the semiotic mechanisms underlying the niche concept. We argue that the “niche” in ecology and evolutionary biology can be consistent with the Umwelt of Jakob von Uexkull. Following John Deely we therefore suggest that investigations into the organism—environment interface constituting niche construction should emphasize the semiotic basis of experience. Peircean signs are pervasive and allow for flexible interpretations of phenomena in relation to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of the behaving organism, which is particularly pertinent for understanding the relation of proximate/ultimate selective forces as co-productive (i.e., reciprocal). Additionally, theoretical work by Kinji Imanishi on the evolution of daily life and Gregory Bateson’s relational view of evolution both support the linkage between proximate and ultimate evolutionary processes of causation necessitated by the niche construction perspective. We will then apply this theoretical framework to two specific examples: 1) hominin evolution, including uniquely human cultural behaviors with niche constructive implications; and 2) the multispecies and anthropocentric niche of human-dog coevolution from which complex cognitive capacities and semiotic relationships emerged. The intended outcome of this paper is the establishment of concrete semiotic mechanisms and theory underlying niche constructive behavior which can then be applied to a broad spectrum of organisms to contextualize the reciprocal relation between proximate and ultimate drivers of behavior.

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Notes

  1. Imanishi’s insistence on the nonlinear directedness of evolution has since become an underlying assumption of niche construction, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (Laland et al. 2015), and its associated inheritance mechanisms (Jablonka and Lamb 2014), which draw on the evolutionary biologist Conrad Waddington’s (1957) notion of epigenetic landscapes with respect to ontogeny.

  2. This phenomenon in readily observable in the nut cracking behavior of capuchin monkeys who reinforce this behavior by modifying the environment through creating anvil stations littered with palm nut exocarps and residue, which contribute to the ecological inheritance of nut cracking (Fragaszy 2012).

  3. We see the term “recursive patterning” as encapsulating the relation between proximate and ultimate causation in niche construction whereby “recursive” refers to the interaction between organismal and environmental phenotypes (including other organisms) (Laland et al. 2011) in daily life (Imanishi 2002[1941]) which are shaped by and also shape the “patterning” (i.e., trajectories) of selective processes.

  4. Interpretants in Peircean semiotics are by no means limited to conceptual or cognitive responses to signs, but can be dispositional, energetic, muscular, etc. effects of sign processes. For instance, interpretants are manifest in actions such as flight upon observing a predator or hearing an alarm call.

  5. The genus Homo includes a range of species/populations across the Pleistocene (~2.6mya-10,000ya). Today only one species remains, us: Homo sapiens sapiens.

  6. Qualisigns, like icons, are derived from qualities. They express the ‘tone’ of the sign, to use another Peircean term. For example, in a red cloth sample, the redness is the qualisign. Sinsigns are when, as per Peirce, a sign-vehicle uses essential facts. For example, the weather vane that shows the direction the wind is blowing is a sinsign. Finally, a legisign is when the sign vehicle signifies based on convention. Legisigns define the characteristics, the shape or the sound, of their replicas. Replicas (a special category of sinsigns) are individual instances of a legisign and their significance is based on both being a replica of that legisign and on the features of their occurrence. We can think of the “symbolic” objects in the archaeological record, like beads strung on a cord, handprints on a cave wall, or multiple pieces of etched ostrich eggshell, as being defined by the relation of such replicas (sinsigns embodying qualisigns) to their legisigns (Kissel and Fuentes 2017a).

  7. In Peircean terms an interpretant that takes a sign as an index is dicent or a dicisign. See Ball 2014; Stjernfelt 2014.

  8. Relocative niche construction occurs when organisms change the environmental factors to which they are exposed by actively moving from one space to another (Odling-Smee et al. 2003).

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Acknowledgments

The authors with to thank Dr. Andrew Winters for putting this special issue together. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive feedback on an earlier draft of this article. Special thanks to Dr. Barbara Smuts for her input on key aspects of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, 296 Corbett Family Hall, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    Jeffrey V. Peterson, Ann Marie Thornburg, Christopher Ball & Agustín Fuentes

  2. Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, 348 Anne Belk Hall, 224 Joyce Lawrence Lane, Boone, NC, 28608, USA

    Marc Kissel

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Peterson, J.V., Thornburg, A.M., Kissel, M. et al. Semiotic Mechanisms Underlying Niche Construction. Biosemiotics 11, 181–198 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-018-9323-1

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