11
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: not found
      • Article: not found

      Who are the innovators? A field experiment with 2 passerine species

      , , ,
      Behavioral Ecology
      Oxford University Press (OUP)

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Related collections

          Most cited references43

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Social learning strategies.

          In most studies of social learning in animals, no attempt has been made to examine the nature of the strategy adopted by animals when they copy others. Researchers have expended considerable effort in exploring the psychological processes that underlie social learning and amassed extensive data banks recording purported social learning in the field, but the contexts under which animals copy others remain unexplored. Yet, theoretical models used to investigate the adaptive advantages of social learning lead to the conclusion that social learning cannot be indiscriminate and that individuals should adopt strategies that dictate the circumstances under which they copy others and from whom they learn. In this article, I discuss a number of possible strategies that are predicted by theoretical analyses, including copy when uncertain, copy the majority, and copy if better, and consider the empirical evidence in support of each, drawing from both the animal and human social learning literature. Reliance on social learning strategies may be organized hierarchically, their being employed by animals when unlearned and asocially learned strategies prove ineffective but before animals take recourse in innovation.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Natural selection and animal personality

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Cultural innovation and transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees: evidence from field experiments.

              Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are the most proficient and versatile users of tools in the wild. How such skills become integrated into the behavioural repertoire of wild chimpanzee communities is investigated here by drawing together evidence from three complementary approaches in a group of oil-palm nut- ( Elaeis guineensis) cracking chimpanzees at Bossou, Guinea. First, extensive surveys of communities adjacent to Bossou have shown that population-specific details of tool use, such as the selection of species of nuts as targets for cracking, cannot be explained purely on the basis of ecological differences. Second, a 16-year longitudinal record tracing the development of nut-cracking in individual chimpanzees has highlighted the importance of a critical period for learning (3-5 years of age), while the similar learning contexts experienced by siblings have been found to result in near-perfect (13 out of 14 dyads) inter-sibling correspondence in laterality. Third, novel data from field experiments involving the introduction of unfamiliar species of nuts to the Bossou group illuminates key aspects of both cultural innovation and transmission. We show that responses of individuals toward the novel items differ markedly with age, with juveniles being the most likely to explore. Furthermore, subjects are highly specific in their selection of conspecifics as models for observation, attending to the nut-cracking activities of individuals in the same age group or older, but not younger than themselves. Together with the phenomenon of inter-community migration, these results demonstrate a mechanism for the emergence of culture in wild chimpanzees.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Behavioral Ecology
                Behavioral Ecology
                Oxford University Press (OUP)
                1045-2249
                1465-7279
                October 21 2011
                July 11 2011
                : 22
                : 6
                : 1241-1248
                Article
                10.1093/beheco/arr120
                952acfbc-bee9-4089-80dd-33bb3b3768cf
                © 2011
                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article