scholarly journals When does cultural evolution become cumulative culture? A case study of humpback whale song

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen C. Garland ◽  
Claire Garrigue ◽  
Michael J. Noad
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Humpback Whale ◽  
Humpback Whales ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Inheritance System ◽  
Fitness Benefits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

Culture presents a second inheritance system by which innovations can be transmitted between generations and among individuals. Some vocal behaviours present compelling examples of cultural evolution. Where modifications accumulate over time, such a process can become cumulative cultural evolution. The existence of cumulative cultural evolution in non-human animals is controversial. When physical products of such a process do not exist, modifications may not be clearly visible over time. Here, we investigate whether the constantly evolving songs of humpback whales ( Megaptera novaeangliae ) are indicative of cumulative cultural evolution. Using nine years of song data recorded from the New Caledonian humpback whale population, we quantified song evolution and complexity, and formally evaluated this process in light of criteria for cumulative cultural evolution. Song accumulates changes shown by an increase in complexity, but this process is punctuated by rapid loss of song material. While such changes tentatively satisfy the core criteria for cumulative cultural evolution, this claim hinges on the assumption that novel songs are preferred by females. While parsimonious, until such time as studies can link fitness benefits (reproductive success) to individual singers, any claims that humpback whale song evolution represents a form of cumulative cultural evolution may remain open to interpretation. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Complex foraging behaviours in wild birds emerge from social learning and recombination of components

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Wild ◽  
M. Chimento ◽  
K. McMahon ◽  
D. R. Farine ◽  
B. C. Sheldon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

Recent well-documented cases of cultural evolution towards increasing efficiency in non-human animals have led some authors to propose that other animals are also capable of cumulative cultural evolution, where traits become more refined and/or complex over time. Yet few comparative examples exist of traits increasing in complexity, and experimental tests remain scarce. In a previous study, we introduced a foraging innovation into replicate subpopulations of great tits, the ‘sliding-door puzzle’. Here, we track diffusion of a second ‘dial puzzle’, before introducing a two-step puzzle that combines both actions. We mapped social networks across two generations to ask if individuals could: (1) recombine socially-learned traits and (2) socially transmit a two-step trait. Our results show birds could recombine skills into more complex foraging behaviours, and naïve birds across both generations could learn the two-step trait. However, closer interrogation revealed that acquisition was not achieved entirely through social learning—rather, birds socially learned components before reconstructing full solutions asocially. As a consequence, singular cultural traditions failed to emerge, although subpopulations of birds shared preferences for a subset of behavioural variants. Our results show that while tits can socially learn complex foraging behaviours, these may need to be scaffolded by rewarding each component. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Human cumulative culture and the exploitation of natural phenomena

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Derex
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Type I ◽  
Type Ii ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

Cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)—defined as the process by which beneficial modifications are culturally transmitted and progressively accumulated over time—has long been argued to underlie the unparalleled diversity and complexity of human culture. In this paper, I argue that not just any kind of cultural accumulation will give rise to human-like culture. Rather, I suggest that human CCE depends on the gradual exploitation of natural phenomena, which are features of our environment that, through the laws of physics, chemistry or biology, generate reliable effects which can be exploited for a purpose. I argue that CCE comprises two distinct processes: optimizing cultural traits that exploit a given set of natural phenomena (Type I CCE) and expanding the set of natural phenomena we exploit (Type II CCE). I argue that the most critical features of human CCE, including its open-ended dynamic, stems from Type II CCE. Throughout the paper, I contrast the two processes and discuss their respective socio-cognitive requirements. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Social learning in swarm robotics

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bredeche ◽  
Nicolas Fontbonne
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Swarm Robotics ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Robot Swarms ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Robotic Tasks ◽  
Behavioural Strategies

In this paper, we present an implementation of social learning for swarm robotics. We consider social learning as a distributed online reinforcement learning method applied to a collective of robots where sensing, acting and coordination are performed on a local basis. While some issues are specific to artificial systems, such as the general objective of learning efficient (and ideally, optimal) behavioural strategies to fulfill a task defined by a supervisor, some other issues are shared with social learning in natural systems. We discuss some of these issues, paving the way towards cumulative cultural evolution in robot swarms, which could enable complex social organization necessary to achieve challenging robotic tasks. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Efficiency fosters cumulative culture across species

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Gruber ◽  
M. Chimento ◽  
L. M. Aplin ◽  
D. Biro
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Evolution Of Complexity ◽  
Diverse Species ◽  
Iterated Learning ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Definition Of

Recent studies in several taxa have demonstrated that animal culture can evolve to become more efficient in various contexts ranging from tool use to route learning and migration. Under recent definitions, such increases in efficiency might satisfy the core criteria of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE). However, there is not yet a satisfying consensus on the precise definition of efficiency, CCE or the link between efficiency and more complex, extended forms of CCE considered uniquely human. To bring clarity to this wider discussion of CCE, we develop the concept of efficiency by (i) reviewing recent potential evidence for CCE in animals, and (ii) clarifying a useful definition of efficiency by synthesizing perspectives found within the literature, including animal studies and the wider iterated learning literature. Finally, (iii) we discuss what factors might impinge on the informational bottleneck of social transmission, and argue that this provides pressure for learnable behaviours across species. We conclude that framing CCE in terms of efficiency casts complexity in a new light, as learnable behaviours are a requirement for the evolution of complexity. Understanding how efficiency greases the ratchet of cumulative culture provides a better appreciation of how similar cultural evolution can be between taxonomically diverse species—a case for continuity across the animal kingdom. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Cultural accumulation and improvement in online fan fiction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Pianzola ◽  
Alberto Acerbi ◽  
Simone Rebora
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Harry Potter ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution Theory ◽  
Digital Literary Studies

We analyse stories in Harry Potter fan fiction published on Archive of Our Own (AO3), using concepts from cultural evolution. In particular, we focus on cumulative cultural evolution, that is, the idea that cultural systems improve with time, drawing on previous innovations. In this study we examine two features of cumulative culture: accumulation and improvement. First, we show that stories in Harry Potter’s fan fiction accumulate cultural traits—unique tags, in our analysis—through time, both globally and at the level of single stories. Second, more recent stories are also liked more by readers than earlier stories. Our research illustrates the potential of the combination of cultural evolution theory and digital literary studies, and it paves the way for the study of the effects of online digital media on cultural cumulation.

scholarly journals The evolution of high-fidelity social learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1928) ◽  
pp. 20200090
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Bayesian Model ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
High Fidelity ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

A defining feature of human culture is that knowledge and technology continually improve over time. Such cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) probably depends far more heavily on how reliably information is preserved than on how efficiently it is refined. Therefore, one possible reason that CCE appears diminished or absent in other species is that it requires accurate but specialized forms of social learning at which humans are uniquely adept. Here, we develop a Bayesian model to contrast the evolution of high-fidelity social learning, which supports CCE, against low-fidelity social learning, which does not. We find that high-fidelity transmission evolves when (1) social and (2) individual learning are inexpensive, (3) traits are complex, (4) individual learning is abundant, (5) adaptive problems are difficult and (6) behaviour is flexible. Low-fidelity transmission differs in many respects. It not only evolves when (2) individual learning is costly and (4) infrequent but also proves more robust when (3) traits are simple and (5) adaptive problems are easy. If conditions favouring the evolution of high-fidelity transmission are stricter (3 and 5) or harder to meet (2 and 4), this could explain why social learning is common, but CCE is rare.

scholarly journals Shared intentionality, reason-giving and the evolution of human culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathal O'Madagain ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Shared Beliefs ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
Different Levels

The biological approach to culture focuses almost exclusively on processes of social learning, to the neglect of processes of cultural coordination including joint action and shared intentionality. In this paper, we argue that the distinctive features of human culture derive from humans' unique skills and motivations for coordinating with one another around different types of action and information. As different levels of these skills of ‘shared intentionality’ emerged over the last several hundred thousand years, human culture became characterized first by such things as collaborative activities and pedagogy based on cooperative communication, and then by such things as collaborative innovations and normatively structured pedagogy. As a kind of capstone of this trajectory, humans began to coordinate not just on joint actions and shared beliefs, but on the reasons for what we believe or how we act. Coordinating on reasons powered the kinds of extremely rapid innovation and stable cumulative cultural evolution especially characteristic of the human species in the last several tens of thousands of years. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Evidence for cumulative cultural evolution in bird song

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Williams ◽  
Robert F. Lachlan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Bird Song ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Bird Songs ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Vocal Imitation ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Existing Form

In studies of cumulative cultural evolution in non-human animals, the focus is most often on incremental changes that increase the efficacy of an existing form of socially learned behaviour, such as the refinement of migratory pathways. In this paper, we compare the songs of different species to describe patterns of evolution in the acoustic structure of bird songs, and explore the question of what building blocks might underlie cumulative cultural evolution of bird song using a comparative approach. We suggest that three steps occurred: first, imitation of independent sounds, or notes, via social learning; second, the formation of categories of note types; and third, assembling note types into sequences with defined structures. Simple sequences can then be repeated to form simple songs or concatenated with other sequences to form segmented songs, increasing complexity. Variant forms of both the notes and the sequencing rules may then arise due to copy errors and innovation. Some variants may become established in the population because of learning biases or selection, increasing signal efficiency, or because of cultural drift. Cumulative cultural evolution of bird songs thus arises from cognitive processes such as vocal imitation, categorization during memorization and learning biases applied to basic acoustic building blocks. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

Cultural Evolution in Animals

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Controlled Experiments ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Invertebrate Species ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. One meaning of “cultural evolution in animals” refers to these discoveries, and I present an overview of key findings. I then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as “cumulative cultural evolution,” have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the topic in nonhuman animals, other than asserting that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence including both controlled experiments and field observations has begun to challenge this view, and in some behavioral domains, notably birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. In this review, I dissect concepts of cultural evolution and cumulative culture and appraise the accumulating evidence bearing on their nature and significance for evolutionary biology at large.

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