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25 results for “Cultural Evolution”
Cumulative cultural evolution and mechanisms for cultural selection in wild bird songs
<p>Cumulative cultural evolution, the accumulation of sequential changes within a single socially learned behaviour that results in improved function, is prominent in humans and has been documented in experimental studies of captive animals and managed wild populations. Here, we provide evidence that cumulative cultural evolution has occurred in the learned songs of Savannah sparrows. In a first step, "click trains" replaced "high note clusters" over a period of three decades. We use mathematical modeling to show that this replacement is consistent with the action of selection, rather than drift or frequency-dependent learning biases. Generations later, young birds elaborated the "click train" song form by adding more clicks. We show that the new songs with more clicks elicit stronger behavioural responses from both males and females. Therefore, we suggest that a combination of social learning, innovation, and sexual selection favoring a specific discrete trait was followed by directional sexual selection that resulted in naturally occurring cumulative cultural evolution in the songs of this wild animal population.</p>
Data from: Social network architecture and the tempo of cumulative cultural evolution
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Cumulative cultural evolution and mechanisms for cultural selection in wild bird songs
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Data from: Laboratory culture of the California Sea Firefly Vargula tsujii (Ostracoda: Cypridinidae): developing a model system for the evolution of marine bioluminescence
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Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children; Implications for cultural evolution
<p>Innovation and social learning are the pillars of cultural evolution, allowing cultural behaviours to cumulatively advance over generations. Yet, little is known about individual differences in the use of social and asocial information. We examined whether personality influenced children's propensity to observe others or independently generate solutions to novel problems. Conscientiousness was associated with electing for no demonstrations, while agreeableness was associated with opting for demonstrations. For children receiving demonstrations, openness to experience consistently predicted deviation from observed methods. Children who opted for no demonstrations were also more likely than those opting for demonstrations to exhibit tool manufacture on an innovation challenge and displayed higher creativity. These results highlight how new cultural traditions emerge, establish and advance by identifying which individuals generate new cultural variants in populations and which are influential in the diffusion of these variants, and help reduce the apparent tension within the 'ratchet' of cumulative culture.</p>
Data and code for "Spatial evolution of human cultures inferred through Bayesian phylogenetic analysis."
<p>Data and code for "Spatial evolution of human cultures inferred through Bayesian phylogenetic analysis."</p>
Data from: Inferring individual-level processes from population-level patterns in cultural evolution
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Data from: Three decades of cultural evolution in Savannah sparrow songs
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Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children; Implications for cultural evolution
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Cumulative Cultural Evolution scheme
<p>Schematic summary of the characteristics of Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE) as described by Mesoudi A., Thornton A. 2018. “What is cumulative cultural evolution?” http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0712</p>
Female and male song exhibit both parallel and divergent patterns of cultural evolution: a long-term study of song structure and diversity in tropical wrens
<p>Animal culture changes over time through processes that include drift, immigration, selection, and innovation. Cultural change has been particularly well-studied for animal vocalizations, especially for the vocalizations of male animals in the temperate zone. Here we examine cultural change in the vocalizations of tropical Rufous-and-white Wrens (<i>Thryophilus rufalbus</i>), quantifying temporal variation in song structure, song type diversity, and population-level distribution of song types in both males and females. We use data from 10 microsatellite loci to quantify patterns of immigration and neutral genetic differentiation over time, to investigate whether cultural diversity changes with rates of immigration. Based on 11 years of data, we show that the spectro-temporal features of several widely-used persistent song types maintain a relatively high level of consistency for both males and females, whereas the distribution and frequency of particular song types change over time for both sexes. Males and females exhibit comparable levels of cultural diversity (i.e. the diversity of song types across the population), although females exhibit greater rates of cultural change over time. We found that female changes in cultural diversity increased when immigration is high, whereas male cultural diversity did not change with immigration. Our study is the first long-term study to explore cultural evolution for both male and female birds and suggests that cultural patterns exhibit notable differences between the sexes.</p>
Data from: Evolution of cultural traits occurs at similar relative rates in different world regions
A fundamental issue in understanding human diversity is whether or not there are regular patterns and processes involved in cultural change. Theoretical and mathematical models of cultural evolution have been developed and are increasingly being used and assessed in empirical analyses. Here, we test the hypothesis that the rates of change of features of human socio-cultural organization are governed by general rules. One prediction of this hypothesis is that different cultural traits will tend to evolve at similar relative rates in different world regions, despite the unique historical backgrounds of groups inhabiting these regions. We used phylogenetic comparative methods and systematic cross-cultural data to assess how different socio-cultural traits changed in (i) island southeast Asia and the Pacific, and (ii) sub-Saharan Africa. The relative rates of change in these two regions are significantly correlated. Furthermore, cultural traits that are more directly related to external environmental conditions evolve more slowly than traits related to social structures. This is consistent with the idea that a form of purifying selection is acting with greater strength on these more environmentally linked traits. These results suggest that despite contingent historical events and the role of humans as active agents in the historical process, culture does indeed evolve in ways that can be predicted from general principles
Data from: The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence
There are consistent individual differences in human intelligence, attributable to a single 'general intelligence' factor, g. The evolutionary basis of g and its links to social learning and culture remain controversial. Conflicting hypotheses regard primate cognition as divided into specialized, independently evolving modules versus a single general process. To assess how processes underlying culture relate to one another and other cognitive capacities, we compiled ecologically relevant cognitive measures from multiple domains, namely reported incidences of behavioural innovation, social learning, tool use, extractive foraging and tactical deception, in 62 primate species. All exhibited strong positive associations in principal component and factor analyses, after statistically controlling for multiple potential confounds. This highly correlated composite of cognitive traits suggests social, technical and ecological abilities have coevolved in primates, indicative of an across-species general intelligence that includes elements of cultural intelligence. Our composite species-level measure of general intelligence, 'primate gs', covaried with both brain volume and captive learning performance measures. Our findings question the independence of cognitive traits and do not support 'massive modularity' in primate cognition, nor an exclusively social model of primate intelligence. High general intelligence has independently evolved at least four times, with convergent evolution in capuchins, baboons, macaques and great apes.
Data from: Four decades of cultural evolution in House Finch songs
Bird song is the primary animal model system for cultural evolution. Longitudinal studies of bird song across many generations can provide insights into patterns and mechanisms of change in socially transmitted traits. In this study, we conducted a comparative analysis of songs of the House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) across an interval of 37 years (in 1975 and in 2012). Recordings from both years were collected in western Long Island, New York, which is thought to be the initial site of introduction of the House Finch around 1940 from the West Coast. Song types experienced a complete turnover during this period, although half of the syllable types were represented in both samples. Song length, frequency bandwidth and several other spectrographic features were the same in both years, and no structural features predicted recurrence of individual syllables. Consistent with the fact that our study population expanded substantially following a cultural founder effect, song and syllable sharing and similarity between individuals were lower in 2012 than in 1975, reflecting an increase in song diversity at the population level. However, in the more recent sample individual songs had fewer syllables, and were sung with less sequence stereotypy across renditions than in the earlier sample. Syllable prevalence in 2012 was associated both with complexity (as gauged by frequency excursion) and increased minimum frequency. Thus, over nearly 4 decades, Eastern House Finch songs remained structurally similar at the whole-song level, diversified between individuals, but became simpler and less consistent within an individual.
Data from: Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution
Cultural evolutionary models have identified a range of conditions under which social learning (copying others) is predicted to be adaptive relative to asocial learning (learning on one's own), particularly in humans where socially learned information can accumulate over successive generations. However, cultural evolution and behavioural economics experiments have consistently shown apparently maladaptive under-utilization of social information in Western populations. Here we provide experimental evidence of cultural variation in people's use of social learning, potentially explaining this mismatch. People in mainland China showed significantly more social learning than British people in an artefact-design task designed to assess the adaptiveness of social information use. People in Hong Kong, and Chinese immigrants in the UK, resembled British people in their social information use, suggesting a recent shift in these groups from social to asocial learning due to exposure to Western culture. Finally, Chinese mainland participants responded less than other participants to increased environmental change within the task. Our results suggest that learning strategies in humans are culturally variable and not genetically fixed, necessitating the study of the 'social learning of social learning strategies' whereby the dynamics of cultural evolution are responsive to social processes, such as migration, education and globalization.
Data from: Cultural evolution of systematically structured behaviour in a non-human primate
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Female and male song exhibit both parallel and divergent patterns of cultural evolution: a long-term study of song structure and diversity in tropical wrens
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Data from: Four decades of cultural evolution in House Finch songs
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Data from: Infectious disease, behavioural flexibility, and the evolution of culture in primates
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Data from: Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution
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Allen Brain Atlas
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DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
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International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.