Fungi as functors: A category-theoretic approach to mycelial organisation

TL;DR

The framework provides a structurally explicit and falsifiable basis for analysing compositional perturbations, mixture coupling, robustness limits, and cross-species comparability in fungal systems.

Abstract

We develop a rigorous, equation-free category-theoretic foundation for fungal organisation. A fungal organism is formalised as a functor from a category $\Env$ of structured environmental states and admissible transformations to a category $\Myc$ of mycelial network states and biologically meaningful morphisms. An operational program category $\Prog$ models time-ordered exposure protocols, and a semantics functor $\mathcal{F}_{\mathrm{prog}}:\Prog\to\Myc$ maps experimental perturbations to induced network transformations. Species and strain variability are expressed as natural transformations between fungal functors, and ecological feedback is captured via an adjunction between sensing and environment modification. Network fusion (anastomosis) is identified with pushouts in $\Myc$, and order effects in exposure sequences are quantified by a local Lie structure and a Baker--Campbell--Hausdorff expansion near the identity program. A minimal worked exposure example demonstrates how non-commutativity yields experimentally testable quadratic scaling of order asymmetry. The framework provides a structurally explicit and falsifiable basis for analysing compositional perturbations, mixture coupling, robustness limits, and cross-species comparability in fungal systems.

Theorems & Definitions (32)

• Definition 2.1: Environmental object
• Definition 2.2: Environmental morphism
• Proposition 2.3
• proof
• Definition 2.4: Mycelial object
• Definition 2.5: Mycelial morphism
• Proposition 2.6
• proof
• Definition 3.1: Fungal functor
• Remark 3.2