Cultural niche construction of repertoire size and learning strategies in songbirds

Creanza, Nicole; Fogarty, Laurel; Feldman, Marcus W.

doi:10.1007/s10682-015-9796-1

Cited by 36 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 101 publications

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“…For example, social learning has been extensively studied in nonhuman animals, in which behavioral strategies, such as producer and scrounger, and cultural trajectories can be more clearly defined than in humans (166,179). Cultural transmission also has large-scale evolutionary implications for some nonhuman animals: For example, theoretical studies suggest that nonrandom mating in birds based on culturally transmitted songs could accelerate speciation (180,181) and that sexual selection on learned songs could influence evolution of the neural underpinnings of learning (182). Recently, studies in a range of animal species have shown that cultural practices can emerge, spread, and change over time, potentially influencing individuals' fitness (183)(184)(185)(186)(187).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters

Creanza

Kolodny

Feldman

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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315

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Human cultural traits-behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other individuals-can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution, and researchers have developed theoretical models, both verbal and mathematical, to facilitate our understanding of these patterns. Many of the first quantitative models of cultural evolution were modified from existing concepts in theoretical population genetics because cultural evolution has many parallels with, as well as clear differences from, genetic evolution. Furthermore, cultural and genetic evolution can interact with one another and influence both transmission and selection. This interaction requires theoretical treatments of gene-culture coevolution and dual inheritance, in addition to purely cultural evolution. In addition, cultural evolutionary theory is a natural component of studies in demography, human ecology, and many other disciplines. Here, we review the core concepts in cultural evolutionary theory as they pertain to the extension of biology through culture, focusing on cultural evolutionary applications in population genetics, ecology, and demography. For each of these disciplines, we review the theoretical literature and highlight relevant empirical studies. We also discuss the societal implications of the study of cultural evolution and of the interactions of humans with one another and with their environment. cultural evolution | mathematical models | gene-culture coevolution | niche construction | demography H uman culture encompasses ideas, behaviors, and artifacts that can be learned and transmitted between individuals and can change over time (1). This process of transmission and change is reminiscent of Darwin's principle of descent with modification through natural selection, and Darwin himself drew this explicit link in the case of languages: "The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel" (2, 3). Theory underpins most scientific endeavors, and, in the 1970s, researchers began to lay the groundwork for cultural evolutionary theory, building on the neo-Darwinian synthesis of genetics and evolution by using verbal, diagrammatic, and mathematical models (4-8). These models are, by necessity, approximations of reality (9), but because they require researchers to specify their assumptions and extract the most important features from complex processes, they have proven exceedingly useful in advancing the study of cultural evolution (10). Here, we review the field of cultural evolutionary theory as it pertains to the extension of biology through culture. We focus on human culture because the bulk of cultural evolutionary models are human-centric and certain processes such as cumulative culture seem to be unique to humans. However, numerous nonhuman species also exhibit cultural transmission, and we consider the areas of overlap between models of human and animal culture in Discussion.The study of cultural evolution is im...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters

Creanza

Kolodny

Feldman

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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315

203

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“…We hypothesized that open‐ended learners would be more likely to show a correlation between individual song elaboration and reproductive success than closed‐ended learners, because open‐ended learners could potentially signal their age with their song. Extending the song‐learning window is expected to be metabolically costly (Beecher & Brenowitz, ; Creanza, Fogarty, & Feldman, ), so longer learning windows should be present only in species where there is selection for song traits that could benefit from extended learning windows, such as sexual selection for larger individual repertoires. Indeed, it has been suggested that adult song learning is associated with the evolution of larger repertoires (Creanza et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extending the song‐learning window is expected to be metabolically costly (Beecher & Brenowitz, ; Creanza, Fogarty, & Feldman, ), so longer learning windows should be present only in species where there is selection for song traits that could benefit from extended learning windows, such as sexual selection for larger individual repertoires. Indeed, it has been suggested that adult song learning is associated with the evolution of larger repertoires (Creanza et al, ). However, we found that the strength of this correlation in species with plastic songs was not significantly different than in song‐stable species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Species‐level repertoire size predicts a correlation between individual song elaboration and reproductive success

Robinson

Creanza

2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Birdsong has long been considered a sexually selected trait that relays honest information about male quality, and laboratory studies generally suggest that female songbirds prefer larger repertoires. However, analysis of field studies across species surprisingly revealed a weak correlation between song elaboration and reproductive success, and it remains unknown why only certain species show this correlation in nature. Taken together, these studies suggest that females in numerous species can detect and prefer larger repertoires in a laboratory setting, but larger individual repertoires correlate with reproductive success only in a subset of these species. This prompts the question: Do the species that show a stronger correlation between reproductive success and larger individual repertoires in nature have anything in common? In this study, we test whether between‐species differences in two song‐related variables—species average syllable repertoire size and adult song stability over time—can be used to predict the importance of individual song elaboration in reproductive success within a species. Our cross‐species meta‐analysis of field studies revealed that species with larger average syllable repertoire sizes exhibited a stronger correlation between individual elaboration and reproductive success than species with smaller syllable repertoires. Song stability versus plasticity in adulthood provided little predictive power on its own, suggesting that the putative correlation between repertoire size and age in open‐ended learners does not explain the association between song elaboration and reproductive success.

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“…There is also recent evidence relating structural changes in the human brain to Paleolithic tool-making abilities (27,28), but additional work is still needed to clarify the direction of causation between culture and cognition (we will return to discuss these findings toward the end of the paper). Finally, when animal culture is considered, a recent study (29) suggests an effect of culture on learning in songbirds: a larger repertoire size is found in species that developed open-ended learning ability.…”

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confidence: 99%

The evolution of cognitive mechanisms in response to cultural innovations

Lotem

Halpern

Edelman

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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When humans and other animals make cultural innovations, they also change their environment, thereby imposing new selective pressures that can modify their biological traits. For example, there is evidence that dairy farming by humans favored alleles for adult lactose tolerance. Similarly, the invention of cooking possibly affected the evolution of jaw and tooth morphology. However, when it comes to cognitive traits and learning mechanisms, it is much more difficult to determine whether and how their evolution was affected by culture or by their use in cultural transmission. Here we argue that, excluding very recent cultural innovations, the assumption that culture shaped the evolution of cognition is both more parsimonious and more productive than assuming the opposite. In considering how culture shapes cognition, we suggest that a process-level model of cognitive evolution is necessary and offer such a model. The model employs relatively simple coevolving mechanisms of learning and data acquisition that jointly construct a complex network of a type previously shown to be capable of supporting a range of cognitive abilities. The evolution of cognition, and thus the effect of culture on cognitive evolution, is captured through small modifications of these coevolving learning and data-acquisition mechanisms, whose coordinated action is critical for building an effective network. We use the model to show how these mechanisms are likely to evolve in response to cultural phenomena, such as language and tool-making, which are associated with major changes in data patterns and with new computational and statistical challenges.tool-making | language evolution | niche construction | cognitive evolution | social learning A n open question in the study of culture and cognitive evolution is whether (and to what extent) cognitive mechanisms, especially those viewed as advanced or sophisticated, evolved in response to social-learning challenges or are merely the product of domain-general mechanisms (1-3). According to one view-still widely held in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology-cognitive adaptations take the form of specialized brain modules (or neuronal mechanisms) that evolved for specific, often social purposes, such as "imitation" (4, 5), "mind reading" (6, 7), "cheating detection" (8), or most famously, language acquisition (9, 10). These ideas have been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds (11,12), and the debate around them demonstrates our limited understanding of the evolution of cognition, its relationship to the evolution of social behavior and, in some organisms, culture.The question of whether culture and social behavior shape the evolution of the brain is, in our view, best considered using the evolutionary framework of niche construction (13-16): that is, culture and social behavior change the ecological niche to which cognitive traits must adapt in the same manner that nest-building by birds changes the ecological niche in which their nestlings evolve. For example, animals' ability t...

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Cultural niche construction of repertoire size and learning strategies in songbirds

Cited by 36 publications

References 101 publications

Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters

Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters

Species‐level repertoire size predicts a correlation between individual song elaboration and reproductive success

The evolution of cognitive mechanisms in response to cultural innovations

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