The social dynamics of cultural behaviour: transmission biases and adaptive social learning strategies in wild great tits.

文化行为的社会动态：野生大山雀的传播偏差和适应性社会学习策略。

基本信息

批准号：
BB/L006081/1
负责人：
Ben Sheldon
金额：
$ 77.87万
依托单位：
University of Oxford
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2014
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2014 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FL006081%2F1
关键词：
social dynamics cultural behaviour transmission

项目摘要

All animals need to make the most of new opportunities or deal with changing environmental conditions. These changes may be short-term such as seasonal change, or long-term shifts such as climate change, and often impact the availability of food resources and, potentially, survival. Broadly, two different strategies might be used to increase access to resources in a changing environment. Animals might develop new solutions to problems (innovation), and thus find new resources themselves, or they might observe others and copy successful solutions. The latter, called social learning, is expected to be much more frequent than innovation, allows new behaviours to spread rapidly between individuals and is thought to be fundamental in forming traditions. Social learning has long fascinated biologists and anthropologists; understanding how behaviours spread and traditions are maintained in animals can shed light on the factors promoting complex culture in humans.An important determinant of social learning is the social organisation of the population in which learning occurs. It was long thought that only humans could exhibit highly developed cultural transmission due to their capacity for communication and learning that is facilitated by long-term social bonds. However recent research has found locally maintained cultural behaviour in a wide range of animals. Further, social network analysis in both human and other animal populations has allowed population structure to be accurately measured. Thus, using social networks to map the spread of new behaviours provides an exciting opportunity to understand this important learning process.In this study, we will study the spread of novel information in wild populations of a common bird, the great tit. All individuals in our large study population are tagged with microchips allowing us to track them automatically; our pilot data shows that they will learn socially. We will develop devices where one of two simple solutions provides access to food, and train an individual to solve one solution on the task in captivity before releasing it back into the woodland where we will place a number of these devices. Using this approach, we will be able to track who has learnt, from whom they learnt, and which of the two solutions they learnt. Using the social network of this population, we will track the spread of the new behaviours, and determine what characteristics made some individuals more important in spreading them. By training different individuals on the two different solutions, we will also see how local traditions develop and are maintained. Not all traditions or behaviours are advantageous. For example, in humans it has been shown that obesity can spread through friendship groups. In the second phase of this project we will alter the reward to different solutions of the task by replacing the popular solution with a low reward (peanut granules instead of a worm), maintaining the high reward on the less popular solution. This will test whether bad traditions are maintained through social reinforcement where individuals blindly copy the majority even when better solutions exist.Finally, we will develop some new technology that will predict what solution new individuals should be learning based upon the behavior of the group they belong to. By changing the behaviour at the device in response, we will then test in detail what elements of the behaviour observed in others is used when social learning. This will be the first time that anyone has used an active device to directly manipulate the behaviour of wild animals in this way. This will itself advance scientists' abilities to understand what rules individuals follow when making decisions such as who to copy and when. Such knowledge will be widely applicable across disciplines, for example in providing new opportunities for active conservation of threatened species by introducing behaviours that improve survival.

所有动物都需要充分利用新的机会或应对不断变化的环境条件。这些变化可能是短期的，例如季节性变化或长期变化，例如气候变化，并且通常会影响食品资源的可用性以及可能的生存。从广义上讲，可以使用两种不同的策略来增加在不断变化的环境中获得资源的访问。动物可能会为问题（创新）开发新的解决方案，从而自己找到新的资源，或者他们可以观察他人并复制成功的解决方案。后者被称为社会学习，预计比创新要频繁得多，它允许新的行为在个人之间迅速传播，并且被认为是形成传统的基础。长期以来，社会学习使生物学家和人类学家着迷。了解行为如何传播和传统在动物中可以揭示促进人类复杂文化的因素。社会学习的重要决定因素是学习发生的人群的社会组织。长期以来，人们认为，由于长期社会纽带促进的沟通和学习能力，只有人类才能表现出高度发展的文化传播。然而，最近的研究发现，在广泛的动物中，局部维持文化行为。此外，人类和其他动物种群中的社交网络分析允许准确测量种群结构。因此，使用社交网络来绘制新行为的传播，这为了解这一重要学习过程提供了一个令人兴奋的机会。在这项研究中，我们将研究新型信息在一只普通鸟的野生种群中的传播，即伟大的山雀。我们大型研究人群中的所有个人都用微芯片标记，使我们能够自动跟踪它们。我们的飞行员数据表明他们将在社交上学习。我们将开发设备，其中一种简单的解决方案之一可以提供食物的访问权限，并培训一个人在圈养中解决任务的解决方案，然后再将其释放回林地，我们将放置许多这些设备。使用这种方法，我们将能够跟踪谁学习，从谁那里学到了谁以及他们学到的两个解决方案中的哪一个。使用该人群的社交网络，我们将跟踪新行为的传播，并确定哪些特征使某些人在传播方面更为重要。通过对两种不同解决方案进行培训，我们还将看到当地传统如何发展和维护。并非所有的传统或行为都是有利的。例如，在人类中，已经表明肥胖可以通过友谊群体传播。在该项目的第二阶段中，我们将通过低奖励（花生颗粒而不是蠕虫）代替受欢迎的解决方案来改变任务的不同解决方案的奖励，从而在不流行的解决方案上保持了高奖励。这将测试是否通过社会强化来维护不良传统，即使个人盲目地复制大多数解决方案也存在。在最终的情况下，我们将开发一些新技术，这些技术将根据他们所属的群体的行为来预测新的解决方案应该学习哪些新的解决方案到。通过更改设备的响应行为，我们将详细测试社交学习时使用其他观察到的行为的要素。这将是任何人第一次使用主动装置以这种方式直接操纵野生动物的行为。这本身将促进科学家在做出诸如抄袭诸如何时和何时复制之类的决定时遵循的规则的能力。这些知识将在各个学科中广泛适用，例如，通过引入改善生存的行为为主动保护受威胁物种的新机会。

项目成果

期刊论文数量（10）

专著数量（0）

科研奖励数量（0）

会议论文数量（0）

专利数量（0）

Spatial variation in avian phenological response to climate change linked to tree health

鸟类物候反应对气候变化的空间变化与树木健康相关

DOI：
10.1038/s41558-021-01140-4
发表时间：
2021
期刊：
Nature Climate Change
影响因子：
30.7
作者：
Cole E
通讯作者：
Cole E

Experimental manipulation of population density in a wild bird alters social structure but not patch discovery rate

DOI：
10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.12.010
发表时间：
2024-01-20
期刊：
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
影响因子：
2.5
作者：
Beck，Kristina B.;Regan，Charlotte E.;Sheldon，Ben C.
通讯作者：
Sheldon，Ben C.

Counting conformity: evaluating the units of information in frequency-dependent social learning

DOI：
10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.09.015
发表时间：
2015-12-01
期刊：
ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR
影响因子：
2.5
作者：
Aplin, Lucy M.;Farine, Damien R.;Sheldon, Ben C.
通讯作者：
Sheldon, Ben C.

Consistent individual differences in the social phenotypes of wild great tits, Parus major.

DOI：
10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.07.016
发表时间：
2015-10
期刊：
Animal behaviour
影响因子：
2.5
作者：
Aplin LM;Firth JA;Farine DR;Voelkl B;Crates RA;Culina A;Garroway CJ;Hinde CA;Kidd LR;Psorakis I;Milligan ND;Radersma R;Verhelst BL;Sheldon BC
通讯作者：
Sheldon BC

Experimentally induced innovations lead to persistent culture via conformity in wild birds.

DOI：
10.1038/nature13998
发表时间：
2015-02-26
期刊：
NATURE
影响因子：
64.8
作者：
Aplin, Lucy M.;Farine, Damien R.;Morand-Ferron, Julie;Cockburn, Andrew;Thornton, Alex;Sheldon, Ben C.
通讯作者：
Sheldon, Ben C.