IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v9y2018i1d10.1038_s41467-018-04728-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cultural conformity generates extremely stable traditions in bird song

Author

Listed:
  • Robert F. Lachlan

    (Queen Mary University of London)

  • Oliver Ratmann

    (Imperial College London)

  • Stephen Nowicki

    (Duke University
    Duke University Medical School)

Abstract

Cultural traditions have been observed in a wide variety of animal species. It remains unclear, however, what is required for social learning to give rise to stable traditions: what level of precision and what learning strategies are required. We address these questions by fitting models of cultural evolution to learned bird song. We recorded 615 swamp sparrow (Melospiza georgiana) song repertoires, and compared syllable frequency distributions to the output of individual-based simulations. We find that syllables are learned with an estimated error rate of 1.85% and with a conformist bias in learning. This bias is consistent with a simple mechanism of overproduction and selective attrition. Finally, we estimate that syllable types could frequently persist for more than 500 years. Our results demonstrate conformist bias in natural animal behaviour and show that this, along with moderately precise learning, may support traditions whose stability rivals those of humans.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert F. Lachlan & Oliver Ratmann & Stephen Nowicki, 2018. "Cultural conformity generates extremely stable traditions in bird song," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-9, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04728-1
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04728-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04728-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-018-04728-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Heather Williams & Andrew Scharf & Anna R. Ryba & D. Ryan Norris & Daniel J. Mennill & Amy E. M. Newman & Stéphanie M. Doucet & Julie C. Blackwood, 2022. "Cumulative cultural evolution and mechanisms for cultural selection in wild bird songs," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Mason Youngblood & Joseph M. Stubbersfield & Olivier Morin & Ryan Glassman & Alberto Acerbi, 2023. "Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Denton, Kaleda K. & Liberman, Uri & Feldman, Marcus W., 2024. "On random conformity bias in cultural transmission of polychotomous traits," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 5-11.
    4. Tim Sainburg & Marvin Thielk & Timothy Q Gentner, 2020. "Finding, visualizing, and quantifying latent structure across diverse animal vocal repertoires," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(10), pages 1-48, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04728-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.