Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations
The social transmission of information is critical to the emergence of animal culture. Two processes are predicted to play key roles in how socially-transmitted information spreads in animal populations: the movement of individuals across the landscape and conformist social learning. We develop a mo...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2018
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| _version_ | 1826259584598147072 |
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| author | Somveille, M Firth, J Aplin, L Farine, D Sheldon, B Thompson, R |
| author_facet | Somveille, M Firth, J Aplin, L Farine, D Sheldon, B Thompson, R |
| author_sort | Somveille, M |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | The social transmission of information is critical to the emergence of animal culture. Two processes are predicted to play key roles in how socially-transmitted information spreads in animal populations: the movement of individuals across the landscape and conformist social learning. We develop a model that, for the first time, explicitly integrates these processes to investigate their impacts on the spread of behavioural preferences. Our results reveal a strong interplay between movement and conformity in determining whether locally-variable traditions establish across a landscape or whether a single preference dominates the whole population. The model is able to replicate a real-world cultural diffusion experiment in great tits Parus major, but also allows for a range of predictions for the emergence of animal culture under various initial conditions, habitat structure and strength of conformist bias to be made. Integrating social behaviour with ecological variation will be important for understanding the stability and diversity of culture in animals. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:52:11Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:109cc9a3-3d27-4854-947b-e1672ae2d501 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:52:11Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:109cc9a3-3d27-4854-947b-e1672ae2d5012022-03-26T09:57:22ZMovement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populationsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:109cc9a3-3d27-4854-947b-e1672ae2d501EnglishSymplectic Elements at OxfordPublic Library of Science2018Somveille, MFirth, JAplin, LFarine, DSheldon, BThompson, RThe social transmission of information is critical to the emergence of animal culture. Two processes are predicted to play key roles in how socially-transmitted information spreads in animal populations: the movement of individuals across the landscape and conformist social learning. We develop a model that, for the first time, explicitly integrates these processes to investigate their impacts on the spread of behavioural preferences. Our results reveal a strong interplay between movement and conformity in determining whether locally-variable traditions establish across a landscape or whether a single preference dominates the whole population. The model is able to replicate a real-world cultural diffusion experiment in great tits Parus major, but also allows for a range of predictions for the emergence of animal culture under various initial conditions, habitat structure and strength of conformist bias to be made. Integrating social behaviour with ecological variation will be important for understanding the stability and diversity of culture in animals. |
| spellingShingle | Somveille, M Firth, J Aplin, L Farine, D Sheldon, B Thompson, R Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| title | Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| title_full | Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| title_fullStr | Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| title_short | Movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| title_sort | movement and conformity interact to establish local behavioural traditions in animal populations |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT somveillem movementandconformityinteracttoestablishlocalbehaviouraltraditionsinanimalpopulations AT firthj movementandconformityinteracttoestablishlocalbehaviouraltraditionsinanimalpopulations AT aplinl movementandconformityinteracttoestablishlocalbehaviouraltraditionsinanimalpopulations AT farined movementandconformityinteracttoestablishlocalbehaviouraltraditionsinanimalpopulations AT sheldonb movementandconformityinteracttoestablishlocalbehaviouraltraditionsinanimalpopulations AT thompsonr movementandconformityinteracttoestablishlocalbehaviouraltraditionsinanimalpopulations |