| 1. |
- Ehn, Micael, et al.
(author)
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Adaptive Strategies for Cumulative Cultural Learning
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)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 therelative 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’ Paradoxin 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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| 2. |
- Ehn, Micael, et al.
(author)
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Adaptive strategies for cumulative cultural learning
- 2012
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In: Journal of Theoretical Biology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-5193 .- 1095-8541. ; 301, s. 103-111
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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| 3. |
- Enquist, Magnus, et al.
(author)
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One cultural parent makes no culture
- 2010
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In: Animal Behaviour. - : Elsevier BV. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 79:6, s. 1353-1362
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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| 4. |
- Fogarty, Laurel, et al.
(author)
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THE EVOLUTION OF TEACHING
- 2011
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In: Evolution. - : Wiley. - 0014-3820 .- 1558-5646. ; 65:10, s. 2760-2770
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Teaching, alongside imitation, is widely thought to underlie the success of humanity by allowing high-fidelity transmission of information, skills, and technology between individuals, facilitating both cumulative knowledge gain and normative culture. Yet, it remains a mystery why teaching should be widespread in human societies but extremely rare in other animals. We explore the evolution of teaching using simple genetic models in which a single tutor transmits adaptive information to a related pupil at a cost. Teaching is expected to evolve where its costs are outweighed by the inclusive fitness benefits that result from the tutor's relatives being more likely to acquire the valuable information. We find that teaching is not favored where the pupil can easily acquire the information on its own, or through copying others, or for difficult to learn traits, where teachers typically do not possess the information to pass on to relatives. This leads to a narrow range of traits for which teaching would be efficacious, which helps to explain the rarity of teaching in nature, its unusual distribution, and its highly specific nature. Further models that allow for cumulative cultural knowledge gain suggest that teaching evolved in humans because cumulative culture renders otherwise difficult-to-acquire valuable information available to teach.
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| 5. |
- Laland, Kevin N, et al.
(author)
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The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions.
- 2015
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In: Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 1471-2954. ; 282:1813
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Scientific activities take place within the structured sets of ideas and assumptions that define a field and its practices. The conceptual framework of evolutionary biology emerged with the Modern Synthesis in the early twentieth century and has since expanded into a highly successful research program to explore the processes of diversification and adaptation. Nonetheless, the ability of that framework satisfactorily to accommodate the rapid advances in developmental biology, genomics and ecology has been questioned. We review some of these arguments, focusing on literatures (evo-devo, developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction) whose implications for evolution can be interpreted in two ways-one that preserves the internal structure of contemporary evolutionary theory and one that points towards an alternative conceptual framework. The latter, which we label the 'extended evolutionary synthesis' (EES), retains the fundaments of evolutionary theory, but differs in its emphasis on the role of constructive processes in development and evolution, and reciprocal portrayals of causation. In the EES, developmental processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation and organism-environment complementarity. We spell out the structure, core assumptions and novel predictions of the EES, and show how it can be deployed to stimulate and advance research in those fields that study or use evolutionary biology.
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| 6. |
- Milham, Michael P., et al.
(author)
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An Open Resource for Non-human Primate Imaging
- 2018
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In: Neuron. - : Elsevier BV. - 0896-6273 .- 1097-4199. ; 100:1, s. 61-74
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Non-human primate neuroimaging is a rapidly growing area of research that promises to transform and scale translational and cross-species comparative neuroscience. Unfortunately, the technological and methodological advances of the past two decades have outpaced the accrual of data, which is particularly challenging given the relatively few centers that have the necessary facilities and capabilities. The PRIMatE Data Exchange (PRIME-DE) addresses this challenge by aggregating independently acquired non-human primate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets and openly sharing them via the International Neuroimaging Data-sharing Initiative (INDI). Here, we present the rationale, design, and procedures for the PRIME-DE consortium, as well as the initial release, consisting of 25 independent data collections aggregated across 22 sites (total = 217 non-human primates). We also outline the unique pitfalls and challenges that should be considered in the analysis of non-human primate MRI datasets, including providing automated quality assessment of the contributed datasets.
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| 7. |
- Navarrete, Ana F., et al.
(author)
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Primate Brain Anatomy : New Volumetric MRI Measurements for Neuroanatomical Studies
- 2018
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In: Brain, behavior, and evolution. - : S. Karger AG. - 0006-8977 .- 1421-9743. ; 91:2, s. 109-117
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Since the publication of the primate brain volumetric dataset of Stephan and colleagues in the early 1980s, no major new comparative datasets covering multiple brain regions and a large number of primate species have become available. However, technological and other advances in the last two decades, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the creation of institutions devoted to the collection and preservation of rare brain specimens, provide opportunities to rectify this situation. Here, we present a new dataset including brain region volumetric measurements of 39 species, including 20 species not previously available in the literature, with measurements of 16 brain areas. These volumes were extracted from MRI of 46 brains of 38 species from the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience Primate Brain Bank, scanned at high resolution with a 9.4-T scanner, plus a further 7 donated MRI of 4 primate species. Partial measurements were made on an additional 8 brains of 5 species. We make the dataset and MRI scans available online in the hope that they will be of value to researchers conducting comparative studies of primate evolution.
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| 8. |
- Rendell, Luke, et al.
(author)
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Why copy others? Insights from the social learning tournament
- 2010
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 328:5975, s. 208-213
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Social learning (learning through observation or interaction with other individuals) is widespread in nature and is central to the remarkable success of humanity, yet it remains unclear why copying is profitable and how to copy most effectively. To address these questions, we organized a computer tournament in which entrants submitted strategies specifying how to use social learning and its asocial alternative (for example, trial-and-error learning) to acquire adaptive behavior in a complex environment. Most current theory predicts the emergence of mixed strategies that rely on some combination of the two types of learning. In the tournament, however, strategies that relied heavily on social learning were found to be remarkably successful, even when asocial information was no more costly than social information. Social learning proved advantageous because individuals frequently demonstrated the highest-payoff behavior in their repertoire, inadvertently filtering information for copiers. The winning strategy (discountmachine) relied nearly exclusively on social learning and weighted information according to the time since acquisition.
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| 9. |
- Uller, Tobias, et al.
(author)
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Developmental bias and evolution : A regulatory network perspective
- 2018
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In: Genetics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0016-6731 .- 1943-2631. ; 209:4, s. 949-966
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Phenotypic variation is generated by the processes of development, with some variants arising more readily than others—a phenomenon known as“developmental bias.”Developmental bias and natural selection have often been portrayed as alternative explanations, but this is a false dichotomy: developmental bias can evolve through natural selection, and bias and selection jointly influence phenotypic evolution. Here, we briefly review the evidence for developmental bias and illustrate how it is studied empirically. We describe recent theory on regulatory networks that explains why the influence of genetic and environmental perturbation on phenotypes is typically not uniform, and may even be biased toward adaptive phenotypic variation. We show how bias produced by developmental processes constitutes an evolving property able to impose direction on adaptive evolution and influence patterns of taxonomic and phenotypic diversity. Taking these considerations together, we argue that it is not sufficient to accommodate developmental bias into evolutionary theory merely as a constraint on evolutionary adaptation. The influence of natural selection in shaping developmental bias, and conversely, the influence of developmental bias in shaping subsequent opportunities for adaptation, requires mechanistic models of development to be expanded and incorporated into evolutionary theory. A regulatory network perspective on phenotypic evolution thus helps to integrate the generation of phenotypic variation with natural selection, leaving evolutionary biology better placed to explain how organisms adapt and diversify.
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