| 1. |
- Smolla, Marco, et al.
(författare)
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Underappreciated features of cultural evolution
- 2021
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954 .- 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 376:1828
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cultural evolution theory has long been inspired by evolutionary biology. Conceptual analogies between biological and cultural evolution have led to the adoption of a range of formal theoretical approaches from population dynamics and genetics. However, this has resulted in a research programme with a strong focus on cultural transmission. Here, we contrast biological with cultural evolution, and highlight aspects of cultural evolution that have not received sufficient attention previously. We outline possible implications for evolutionary dynamics and argue that not taking them into account will limit our understanding of cultural systems. We propose twelve key questions for future research, among which are calls to improve our understanding of the combinatorial properties of cultural innovation, and the role of development and life history in cultural dynamics. Finally, we discuss how this vibrant research field can make progress by embracing its multidisciplinary nature.
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| 2. |
- Jansson, Fredrik, et al.
(författare)
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Modelling cultural systems and selective filters
- 2021
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 376:1828
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A specific goal of the field of cultural evolution is to understand how processes of transmission and selection at the individual level lead to population-wide patterns of cultural diversity and change. Models of cultural evolution have typically assumed that traits are independent of one another and essentially exchangeable. But culture has a structure: traits bear relationships to one another that affect the transmission and selection process itself. Here we introduce a modelling framework to explore the effect of cultural structure on the process of learning. Through simulations, we find that introducing this simple structure changes the cultural dynamics. Based on a basic filtering mechanism for parsing these relationships, more elaborate cultural filters emerge. In a mostly incompatible cultural domain of traits, these filters organise culture into mostly (but not fully) consistent and stable systems. Incompatible domains produce small homogeneous cultures, while more compatibility increases size, diversity, and group divergence. When individuals copy based on a trait's features (here, its compatibility relationships) they produce more homogeneous cultures than when they copy based on the agent carrying the cultural trait. We discuss the implications of considering cultural systems and filters in the dynamics of cultural change.
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| 3. |
- Weishaupt, Holger, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
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Graph Centrality Based Prediction of Cancer Genes
- 2016
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Ingår i: Engineering Mathematics II. - Cham : Springer. - 9783319421049 - 9783319421056 ; , s. 275-311
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Current cancer therapies including surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are often plagued by high failure rates. Designing more targeted and personalized treatment strategies requires a detailed understanding of druggable tumor drivergenes. As a consequence, the detection of cancer driver genes has evolved to a critical scientific field integrating both high-through put experimental screens as well as computational and statistical strategies. Among such approaches, network based prediction tools have recently been accentuated and received major focus due to their potential to model various aspects of the role of cancer genes in a biological system. In this chapter, we focus on how graph centralities obtained from biological networks have been used to predict cancer genes. Specifically, we start by discussing the current problems in cancer therapy and the reasoning behind using network based cancer gene prediction, followed by an outline of biological networks, their generation and properties. Finally, we review major concepts, recent results as well as future challenges regarding the use of graph centralities in cancer gene prediction.
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| 4. |
- Ehn, Micael, et al.
(författare)
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Adaptive strategies for cumulative cultural learning
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Theoretical Biology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-5193 .- 1095-8541. ; 301, s. 103-111
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The demographic and ecological success of our species is frequently attributed to our capacity for cumulative culture. However, it is not yet known how humans combine social and asocial learning to generate effective strategies for learning in a cumulative cultural context. Here we explore how cumulative culture influences the relative merits of various pure and conditional learning strategies, including pure asocial and social learning, critical social learning, conditional social learning and individual refiner strategies. We replicate the Rogers' paradox in the cumulative setting. However, our analysis suggests that strategies that resolved Rogers' paradox in a non-cumulative setting may not necessarily evolve in a cumulative setting, thus different strategies will optimize cumulative and non-cumulative cultural learning.
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| 5. |
- Cornelissen, Johannes H C, et al.
(författare)
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Global negative vegetation feedback to climate warming responses of leaf litter decomposition rates in cold biomes
- 2007
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 10:7, s. 619-627
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Whether climate change will turn cold biomes from large long-term carbon sinks into sources is hotly debated because of the great potential for ecosystem-mediated feedbacks to global climate. Critical are the direction, magnitude and generality of climate responses of plant litter decomposition. Here, we present the first quantitative analysis of the major climate-change-related drivers of litter decomposition rates in cold northern biomes worldwide.Leaf litters collected from the predominant species in 33 global change manipulation experiments in circum-arctic-alpine ecosystems were incubated simultaneously in two contrasting arctic life zones. We demonstrate that longer-term, large-scale changes to leaf litter decomposition will be driven primarily by both direct warming effects and concomitant shifts in plant growth form composition, with a much smaller role for changes in litter quality within species. Specifically, the ongoing warming-induced expansion of shrubs with recalcitrant leaf litter across cold biomes would constitute a negative feedback to global warming. Depending on the strength of other (previously reported) positive feedbacks of shrub expansion on soil carbon turnover, this may partly counteract direct warming enhancement of litter decomposition.
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| 6. |
- Smolla, Marco, et al.
(författare)
-
Underappreciated features of cultural evolution
- 2024
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cultural evolution theory has long been inspired by evolutionary biology. Conceptual analogies between biological and cultural evolution have led to the adoption of a range of formal theoretical approaches from population dynamics and genetics. However, this has resulted in a research programme with a strong focus on cultural transmission. Here, we contrast biological with cultural evolution, and highlight aspects of cultural evolution that have not received sufficient attention previously. We outline possible implications for evolutionary dynamics and argue that not taking them into account will limit our understanding of cultural systems. We propose twelve key questions for future research, among which are calls to improve our understanding of the combinatorial properties of cultural innovation, and the role of development and life history in cultural dynamics. Finally, we discuss how this vibrant research field can make progress by embracing its multidisciplinary nature.
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| 7. |
- Lindenfors, Patrik, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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The Cultural Evolution of Democracy : Saltational Changes in A Political Regime Landscape
- 2011
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - San Francisco : Public Library of Science. - 1932-6203. ; 6:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transitions to democracy are most often considered the outcome of historical modernization processes. Socio-economic changes, such as increases in per capita GNP, education levels, urbanization and communication, have traditionally been found to be correlates or ‘requisites’ of democratic reform. However, transition times and the number of reform steps have not been studied comprehensively. Here we show that historically, transitions to democracy have mainly occurred through rapid leaps rather than slow and incremental transition steps, with a median time from autocracy to democracy of 2.4 years, and overnight in the reverse direction. Our results show that autocracy and democracy have acted as peaks in an evolutionary landscape of possible modes of institutional arrangements. Only scarcely have there been slow incremental transitions. We discuss our results in relation to the application of phylogenetic comparative methods in cultural evolution and point out that the evolving unit in this system is the institutional arrangement, not the individual country which is instead better regarded as the ‘host’ for the political system.
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| 8. |
- Buijs, Jos, et al.
(författare)
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Localized changes in the structural stability of myoglobin upon adsorption onto silica particles, as studied with hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry
- 2003
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Ingår i: Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. - 0021-9797 .- 1095-7103. ; 263:2, s. 441-448
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A new method is presented for monitoring the conformational stability of various parts of a protein that is physically adsorbed onto nanometer-sized silica particles. The method employs hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange of amide hydrogens, a process that is extremely sensitive to structural features of proteins. The resulting mass increase is analyzed with Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) mass spectrometry. Higher structural specificity is obtained by enzymatically cleaving the adsorbed proteins prior to mass spectrometric analysis. The mass increases of four peptic fragments of myoglobin are followed as a function of the H/D exchange time. The four peptic fragments cover 90% of the myoglobin structure. Two of the peptic fragments, located in the middle of the myoglobin sequence and close to the heme group, do not show any adsorption-induced changes in their structural stability, whereas the more stable C- and N-terminal fragments are destabilized. Interestingly, for the N-terminal fragment, comprising residues 1–29, two distinct and equally large conformational populations are observed. One of these populations has a stability similar to that in solution (−23 kJ/mol), whereas the other population is highly destabilized upon adsorption (−11 kJ/mol).
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| 9. |
- Buskell, Andrew, et al.
(författare)
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A systems approach to cultural evolution
- 2019
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Ingår i: Palgrave Communications. - Hants : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2055-1045. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A widely accepted view in the cultural evolutionary literature is that culture forms a dynamic system of elements (or 'traits') linked together by a variety of relationships. Despite this, large families of models within the cultural evolutionary literature tend to represent only a small number of traits, or traits without interrelationships. As such, these models may be unable to capture complex dynamics resulting from multiple interrelated traits. Here we put forward a systems approach to cultural evolutionary research-one that explicitly represents numerous cultural traits and their relationships to one another. Basing our discussion on simple graph-based models, we examine the implications of the systems approach in four domains: (i) the cultural evolution of decision rules ('filters') and their influence on the distribution of cultural traits in a population; (ii) the contingency and stochasticity of system trajectories through a structured state space; (iii) how trait interrelationships can modulate rates of cultural change; and (iv) how trait interrelationships can contribute to understandings of inter-group differences in realised traits. We suggest that the preliminary results presented here should inspire greater attention to the role of multiple interrelated traits on cultural evolution, and should motivate attempts to formalise the rich body of analyses and hypotheses within the humanities and social science literatures.
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| 10. |
- Enquist, Magnus, et al.
(författare)
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One cultural parent makes no culture
- 2010
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Ingår i: Animal Behaviour. - : Elsevier BV. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 79:6, s. 1353-1362
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The ability to acquire knowledge and skills from others is widespread in animals and is commonly thought to be responsible for the behavioural traditions observed in many species. However, in spite of the extensive literature on theoretical analyses and empirical studies of social learning, little attention has been given to whether individuals acquire knowledge from a single individual or multiple models. Researchers commonly refer to instances of sons learning from fathers, or daughters from mothers, while theoreticians have constructed models of uniparental transmission, with little consideration of whether such restricted modes of transmission are actually feasible. We used mathematical models to demonstrate that the conditions under which learning from a single cultural parent can lead to stable culture are surprisingly restricted ( the same reasoning applies to a single social-learning event). Conversely, we demonstrate how learning from more than one cultural parent can establish culture, and find that cultural traits will reach a nonzero equilibrium in the population provided the product of the fidelity of social learning and the number of cultural parents exceeds 1. We discuss the implications of the analysis for interpreting various findings in the animal social-learning literature, as well as the unique features of human culture.
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