Ecological traps as a failure mode of niche construction: A diagnostic for the polycrisis

Integrating ecological trap theory and niche construction reveals a specific and underexamined category: self-induced traps, in which an organism's own construction decouples the cues guiding its choices from outcomes. Self-induced traps are expected to be rare because selection eliminates construction when costs rebound on the constructor. Traps persist when costs escape this correction, being delayed in time, displaced onto others or other geographies, or hidden below thresholds. Humans are distinctive because our construction extends to the information environment: We build not only the material conditions that degrade outcomes but also the signal environment through which those outcomes would need to be detected. This creates a stacked trap in which proxy rewards reinforce engagement while viability feedback is blocked. Applied to the Anthropocene traps that define the polycrisis, the framework supplies the perceptual mechanism sustaining lock-in and frames solutions towards repairing cue-outcome relationships at the environmental level.