Öztürk, SeldaAkıllı, Sinan2026-01-142026-01-1419.12.2025Öztürk, S., Akıllı, S. Bioindicator Benthic Macroinvertebrates as Semiotic Agents: A Biosemiotics-Oriented and Ethical Reframing Toward Meaningful Sustainability. Biosemiotics (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-025-09635-9https://link.springer.com/journal/12304https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12695/3880Freshwater ecosystems, though covering less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, sustain nearly 10% of known species and are increasingly imperiled by climate change and anthropogenic stressors. Conventional biomonitoring frameworks, such as the EU Water Framework Directive, employ benthic macroinvertebrates as bioindicators, defining them primarily as proxies of ecosystem health. However, this narrow paradigm tends to overlook their “semiotic agency” (Sharov & Tønnessen, 2021)—the capacity to perceive, interpret, and act upon environmental signs that structure their Umwelt. In this article, we present what we term a biosemiotic ecological synthesis of six recent studies on freshwater macroinvertebrates and invertebrate conservation. Rather than generating new field data, we re-read published ecological and behavioral results through a biosemiotic and environmental humanities lens. We show that reported context-sensitive responses—microhabitat relocation, altered emergence timing, feeding adjustments, and acoustic signaling—can be interpreted as semiotic activity, patterned organism–environment relations in which macroinvertebrates evaluate and respond to environmental cues. Under stressors such as mining, nutrient enrichment, or hydrological isolation, these capacities are diminished in what Maran (2023) has called an “Umwelt collapse”, an often-overlooked dimension of biodiversity loss. By reframing benthic macroinvertebrates as interpretive agents, our study expands biomonitoring toward approaches that seek to preserve not only taxonomic and functional diversity, but also the communicative richness and behavioral plasticity of freshwater life. This reframing carries implications for conservation efforts and sustainability in the Anthropocene: conservation must protect not only biological diversity but also the semiotic diversity through which life interprets and co-creates ecosystems.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessBenthic macroinvertebrates · Biomonitoring · Biosemiotic ecological synthesis · Semiotic agency · Umwelt collapse · Sustainabilitybiomonitoringbiosemiotic ecological synthesissemiotic agencyUmwelt collapseSustainabilityArticle10.1007/s12304-025-09635-9Q1Q1