Living systems—unlike non-living or inanimate objects—use information about their surrounding environment to survive. But not all information from the environment is meaningful or relevant for survival. The subset of information that is meaningful, and perhaps necessary for being alive, is called semantic information.

In a new paper published in PRX Life, University of Rochester physicists and their coauthors have, for the first time, applied this theory of semantic information to a well-known model of living systems in biology and ecology: an organism or agent foraging for resources.