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Cultural Transmission (cultural + transmission)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	54%
Humanities and Social Sciences	27%

Selected Abstracts

First Documentation of Cultural Transmission of Predator Recognition by Larval Amphibians

ETHOLOGY, Issue 6 2007
Maud C. O. Ferrari
Predation is a pervasive selective agent shaping a prey's behaviour, morphology and life history. To survive, prey animals have to respond adaptively to predation threats and this can be achieved through learned predator recognition. Cultural transmission of predator recognition is likely a widespread means of learning in social animals, including mammals, birds and fishes. However, no studies have investigated the cultural transmission of predator recognition in amphibians. In our study, we examined whether naïve woodfrog (Rana sylvatica) tadpoles can acquire the recognition of the odour of a predatory tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) from experienced conspecifics. After conditioning some tutors to recognize salamander odour, we paired naïve observer tadpoles with either a salamander-naïve or salamander-experienced tutor and exposed the pairs to either salamander odour or a water control. Observers were subsequently tested alone for a response to salamander odour. We found that when given salamander odour, observer tadpoles that were paired with a salamander-experienced tutor successfully learned to recognize the salamander odour as a threat, whereas the observers paired with salamander-naïve tutors did not. Likewise, tadpoles exposed to the water control did not learn to recognize the salamander regardless of whether they were paired with a naïve or experienced tutor. This is the first study demonstrating cultural transmission of predator recognition in an amphibian species. [source]

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture: Breaking Down Boundaries edited by Miriam Stark, Brenda Bowser, and Lee Horne

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009
BEN MARWICK
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Southeast Asian Slavery and Slave -Gathering Warfare as a Vector for Cultural Transmission: The Case of Burma and Thailand

THE HISTORIAN, Issue 3 2009
Bryce Beemer
First page of article [source]

First Documentation of Cultural Transmission of Predator Recognition by Larval Amphibians

Implications of Sibling Caregiving for Sibling Relations and Teaching Interactions in Two Cultures

ETHOS, Issue 2 2003
Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin
This article explores the social and cognitive implications of sibling caregiving among the Zinacantec Maya of Mexico and the Wolof of Senegal. Ethnographic video data of sibling caregiving interactions were collected, focusing on children ages three to 13 years interacting with their two-year-old siblings. Sibling relations in both cultures reflect a system of multiage play, the children's sensitivity to age and gender hierarchies, and the older siblings'role as teachers of their younger siblings. Differences in the two groups include more verbal exchanges and wordplay with the two-year-old Wolof children and more overt efforts by older Zinacantec siblings to incorporate the two year olds into their group activity. The data indicate an overall pattern of cultural transmission by which older siblings teach younger ones in the context of caring for them. The pattern is nuanced by each group's social organization and rules for social interaction, exhibited in the children's play. [source]

SONG LEARNING ACCELERATES ALLOPATRIC SPECIATION

EVOLUTION, Issue 9 2004
R. F. Lachlan
Abstract The songs of many birds are unusual in that they serve a role in identifying conspecific mates, yet they are also culturally transmitted. Noting the apparently high rate of diversity in one avian taxon, the songbirds, in which song learning appears ubiquitous, it has often been speculated that cultural transmission may increase the rate of speciation. Here we examine the possibility that song learning affects the rate of allopatric speciation. We construct a population-genetic model of allopatric divergence that explores the evolution of genes that underlie learning preferences (predispositions to learn some songs over others). We compare this with a model in which mating signals are inherited only genetically. Models are constructed for the cases where songs and preferences are affected by the same or different loci, and we analyze them using analytical local stability analysis combined with simulations of drift and directional sexual selection. Under nearly all conditions examined, song divergence occurs more readily in the learning model than in the nonlearning model. This is a result of reduced frequency-dependent selection in the learning models. Cultural evolution causes males with unusual genotypes to tend to learn from the majority of males around them, and thus develop songs compatible with the majority of the females in the population. Unusual genotypes can therefore be masked by learning. Over a wide range of conditions, learning therefore reduces the waiting time for speciation to occur and can be predicted to accelerate the rate of speciation. [source]

Intergenerational Transmission of Fertility Patterns,

OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 2 2009
Alison L. Booth
Abstract Recent studies by economists have focused on cultural transmission from the origin country rather than the origin family. Our paper extends this research by investigating how family-specific,cultural transmission' can affect fertility rates. Following Machado and Santos Silva [Journal of the American Statistical Association (2005) Vol. 100, p. 1226] and Miranda [Journal of Population Economics (2008) Vol. 21, p. 67], we estimate count data quantile regression models using the British Household Panel Survey. We find that a woman's origin-family size is positively associated with completed fertility in her destination family. A woman's country of birth also matters for her fertility. For a sub-sample of continuously partnered men and women, both partners' origin-family sizes significantly affect destination-family fertility. [source]

Kin influence on the decision to start using modern contraception: A longitudinal study from rural Gambia

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
Ruth Mace
In earlier work in rural Gambia, we found that kin influence reproductive success: matrilineal kin, especially mothers, maternal grandmothers and unmarried older sisters all helped to promote the survival and nutrition of young children; in contrast patrilineal kin, especially husband's mother, promoted fertility. These differing influences of maternal and paternal lineage are predicted on the basis of kin selection and sexual conflict theory, because the costs of reproduction fall more heavily on the mother than the father. These studies covered the period 1950,1975, when this population was essentially "natural fertility, natural mortality." It is not possible to tell whether these effects were due to kin influencing active reproductive decision-making, or due to indirect effects such as kin improving nutrition by helping. Since 1976, modern contraception has become available in this community. In an analysis of the behavioral ecology of the decision to start using modern contraception, we found that high parity for your age was a key determinant of the decision, as was village and calendar year. Here, we examine whether the presence or absence of kin and also whether the contraceptive status of kin influenced the decision to start using contraception. We find little evidence that kin directly influence contraceptive uptake, either by their presence/absence or as models for social learning. However, death of a first husband (i.e., widowhood) does accelerate contraceptive uptake. We discuss our results from an evolutionary demography perspective, in particular regarding theories of sexual conflict, biased cultural transmission, and social learning. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Tradeoffs and sexual conflict over women's fertility preferences in Mpimbwe

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder
There are two principle evolutionary models for why women reduce their fertility, which can be used to explain the modern demographic transition. The first derives from optimality theory (specifically the "quantity-quality" tradeoff hypothesis), and the second from models of biased cultural transmission ("prestige bias" and "kin influence" hypotheses). Data on family planning preferences collected in 1996 and 1998 in a rural African village (in Mpimbwe, Tanzania) are used to test predictions derived from each hypothesis and show that both "quantity-quality" tradeoffs and biased cultural transmission underlie Pimbwe women's decisions. Reproductive decisions, however, are not made in a vacuum. Men and women's ideal family sizes often differ, and sexual conflict is particularly likely to affect a woman's success in limiting her family size. Pimbwe women's reproductive output between the initial family planning survey in 1996 and the most recent demographic survey (2006) is analyzed in relation to both the woman's preferences to limit her family and her exposure to husbands and husbands' kin. Despite wide differences in desired family sizes between men and women the extent of sexual conflict in this population is restricted to husbands and wives, and affects not a woman's use or planned use of modern contraception but her success in employing such methods effectively. There is also some evidence that a woman's mother and her kin assist in the use and effective use of modern methods, offering a prevailing force to the high-fertility objectives of the husband. Am. J. Hum. Biol., 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]