There is one very large piece of the puzzle missing. Energy.

The problem with energy is that any expression of it becomes information.

Yet energy and information go opposite directions of time. Energy is "conserved," because it is only present. So it is creating time, because it creates information.

Think in terms of a wave; The energy passes through the medium, driving the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall, back to equilibrium. So the energy goes onto the future, as the fluctuations recede into the past.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present. Cause becomes effect, because the energy, being "conserved," doesn't remain in the past.

We are mobile orgnisms, which logically is the reason our experience is a sequence of perceptions. So our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future, as opposed to change turning future to past. Potential, actual, residual.

While the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems process the energy, it is the central nervous system sorting and organizing the information. Signals from the noise. So if we are only going to explain our reality in terms of the information and definition extracted and distilled, the energy gets edited out as too fuzzy and indeterminate.

All reality we experience is information. Temperature, pressure, color, sound, time, are all aspects of the frequencies and amplitudes permeating our world.

Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Then that the function of our minds is to distinguish what information is useful, we are also habitually reducting it down to the most useful or stable forms. Thus seeing our reality in terms of materiality, rather than energy.

Keep in mind that consciousness goes past to future, as perceptions emotions and thoughts go future to past.

E.O. Wilson described the insect brain as a thermostat, but it's also been shown that ants can count footsteps, as a function of navigation, which means there is a sequential function as well. A clock.

Consider the difference between thought and emotion, in that thoughts are clear and distinct, which means they also have to be somewhat stable. Yet emotions move us, without being quite clear.

Putting this in terms of a wave, thoughts are like the wave cresting, making them final and complete, even if only the image remains in our minds. While emotions are like the wave building or receding. We sense the pressure, and/or temperature increasing, declining, but any clarity is incidental to the feeling driving us.

So our thoughts are like the clock counting the events, while emotions are the thermostat and barometer, feeling the energy rising and falling.

So consciousness would seem to be a form of energy, which like energy, we can only seem to describe in terms of the forms it expresses, rather than being able to grasp it as something distinct, even if we sense it is somehow not only the forms.

While this doesn't totally explain biological sentience, it might help to relate it with all its various expressions in organisms and ecosystems.

As Emerson said; We are but thickened light.