We are glad to announce that the Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award for volume 2017 goes to Timothy C. Mullet, Almo Farina Stuart H. Gage for their article The Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis: An Ecoacoustics Perspective on Species Habitat Selection, Biosemiotics 2017, Volume 10, Issue 3, p. 319–336. As this year’s award winners, the authors are awarded a book voucher from Springer Publishers worth EUR 250, and an electronic subscription to Biosemiotics for one year.

Established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) on July 3rd 2014, and in conjunction with Springer, publishers of the Society’s official journal, Biosemiotics, the Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award seeks to recognize those papers published in the journal that present novel and potentially important contributions to the ongoing project of biosemiotic research, its scientific impact and its future prospects (as detailed at http://www.biosemiotics.org/statutes_of_the_annual_biosemiotic_achievement_award.pdf).

The central hypothesis of the paper – the Acoustic Habitat Hypothesis – is clearly articulated, and is well supported by evidence drawn from a range of recent research studies. The article succeeds in integrating a variety of diverse ecoacoustic research projects into a unified theoretical framework and hypothesis which, because of its focus on habitat selection and communication, is fertile ground for biosemiotics. At the same time, the paper has practical and ecological relevance for species protection and for habitat monitoring.

Theoretical Significance

The paper does not build its biosemiotic agenda on the classics of semiotics, but rather seeks novel theoretical synthesis which would help to uncover the problematics at hand. The different projects that are drawn together in the paper include theory of resources, acoustic adaptation and niche hypotheses, theories of soundscape orientation and other eco-field research. The unification of the various perspectives and terms is achieved via the development of the central hypothesis – the acoustic habitat hypothesis – designed to explain “how the acoustic environment influences habitat selection in sound-dependent species” (p. 319). The context for this hypothesis is the concept of an acoustic eco-field defined as “the acoustic space of information an animal cognitively uses to fulfil some functional needs in the environment” (p. 331). It is here that the biosemiotic connection is made explicit: “Hence, the acoustic eco-field is the biosemiotics representation of sounds and their spatial and temporal characteristics a species interprets to carry out various functions” (p. 320). Acoustic habitats comprise a variety of sounds and their characteristics necessary for habitat selection and as such constitute “the ensemble of all acoustic eco-fields that a species requires to survive” (p. 322).

There are different ways of delimiting the eco-fields of species, with the focus so far being on functions (e.g. Farina and Belgrano 2006). The current paper shifts the focus to the sign carriers by which the functions are reached. As the Peircean semiotic premise states—the sign is a threefold composite uniting the representamen, object and interpretant—, and a highlighting of any of those should not forget the presence of the other constituents of the sign. This is elegantly evidenced by the current paper, which, despite the focus on the acoustic channel, demonstrates its entanglement in the more general processes of meaning production and recognition exhibited in the living world.

Ecological Relevance

The paper points to the potential of fruitful cooperation between field biology and biosemiotics, both in identifying the roots of species decline and in terms of proposing some semiotic ways to target the issue. Through the example of the use of sounds and acoustic communication, the authors indicate how the change of the medium or communication channel result in the transformation of signs essential for the organism’s choices. The authors also distinguish between the acoustic habitat specialists and generalists (having vs. not having specific soundscape preferences) – hence embedding the traditional ecological terms within semiotic vocabulary. The ‘eco-field hypothesis’ has been articulated in previous papers by one of the authors, Almo Farina (Farina 2006; Farina and Belgrano 2004, 2006). However, this paper employs this hypothesis and the acoustic habitat hypothesis to target one of the most burning ecological issues—namely the question of habitat loss and transformation. Traditional ecological studies tend to stress the fact of habitat degradation per se, but along with that goes a semiotic problem – even if the transformed environments contain resources which allow the species to live there, will the organisms be able to recognise them under the changed conditions? Will there be indicators (in this concrete case—acoustic ones), which conform with the umwelten of the species? Will there be new semiotic relations created?

The authors propose the development and application of soundscape indices for the determination of acoustic habitat characteristics as well as the analysis and monitoring of restoration efforts relying on the soundscape markers. Indeed, biosemiotics could give a hand in developing such monitoring devices not just for acoustic habitats, but for any sign carriers and representations which signify certain resources for a concrete species. A more intense collaboration with practitioners is something biosemiotics is yet to strive for and the nominated paper introduces concrete possibilities for furthering such cooperation.

Opening Further Research Vistas

This paper opens up possibilities for future research into a variety of areas relating to ecoacoustics – umwelt studies, natural resource studies including sustainability and conservation topics, and research into technology-mediated relations between nature and human culture. Studies of acoustic ecology mainly focus on (but are not restricted to) avian studies, and this is so with the nominated paper as well, which mostly discusses avian examples. But there is great potential to go beyond this to look at other species, including marine organisms. There is, moreover, further potential for research into human–animal relations and other sensory modalities. The biosemiotic stance, as the paper demonstrates, can thereby serve not only as a theoretical tool, but as a platform for making new discoveries and developing solutions for existing problems.

The Members of the 2017 Biosemiotic Achievement Award Selection Committee

Maurita Harney

Riin Magnus