Individuals of a given population share more behavioural traits with each other than with members of other populations. For example, in humans, traditions are specific to regions or countries. These cultural relationships can tell us about the history of the populations, their origin and the amount of exchange between them. In birds, regional dialects have been described in many species. However, the mechanisms with which dialects form in populations is not fully understood because it is difficult to analyse experimentally. Translocated populations, with their known histories, offer an opportunity to study these mechanisms. From the study of bird vocalisations we can make inferences regarding population structure and relationships as well as their history, individual behavioural state, neuronal and physiological mechanisms or development of neuronal learning. Too achieve this, cross-disciplinary approaches are necessary, combining field work, bioacoustic methods, statistical tools such as machine learning, ecological knowledge and phylogenetic methods. Here, I will describe computational methods for the treatment and classification of bird vocalisations and will use them to depict the relationships between bird populations. First, I discretise the data in order to define the cultural traits. Then phylogenetic tree-building methods are used. Two approaches are possible, first to map these traits onto known phylogenies and, second, to directly build the phylogeny of these traits. I describe the application of these methods to test several hypothesis on bird songs evolution related to both their history and the mechanisms with which they evolve. Evidence for the presence of dialects in the Puget Sound white-crowned sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys pugetensis) is provided on the basis of the syllable content of the songs. The absence of vocal sexual dimorphism is reported in the Australasian gannet (or takapu, Morus serrator), a member of the Sulidae family for which extensive sexual dimorphism has been reported in other species. Subsequently, convergence between the begging calls of several cuckoo species and their respective hosts is suggested by various bioacoustic methods. In addition, the male calls of the hihi (or stitchbird, Notiomystis cincta) is analysed in an island population. The corresponding pattern of variation suggests a post-dispersal acquisition of calls via learning which is in agreement with the most related species in the revised phylogeny of the hihi. Finally, the mechanisms of song evolution are depicted in translocated populations of tieke (or saddleback, Philesturnus carunculatus rufusater), resulting in the development of island dialects.

<p>This dissertation seeks to bring together two philosophical literatures: the functions literature from the philosophy of biology, and the functionalist literature in naturalistic metaethics. Biological function suggests both objectivity and normativity: “the function of the heart is to pump blood” is an objective fact, and yet, hearts may malfunction—and malfunctioning is normative. Many ethicists wish to naturalize ethics—to help find a place for human normative lives in the objective natural world. In order to do so, they need tools to analyze humans as the products of evolutionary processes. Humans have a dual inheritance system involving both cultural and genetic inheritance that makes analysis of function for them particularly complex. In this dissertation, I develop a set of conceptual tools for those who wish to naturalize. I begin by developing an account of inheritance that can handle culture. Then, I elaborate the selected effects account of function so that it can handle all the evolutionary strangeness of culture. I then introduce the monolith fallacy—an error often committed by those studying human evolution—a tendency to oversimplify—to emphasize the high degree of complexity involved in any naturalizing project. Finally, I introduce the notion of value-guided functions—a kind of functioning not tied to our intentions, but to our values to round out the picture. I then apply the whole framework to the work of the functional metaethicists: Allan Gibbard, David Wong, Richard Joyce, and Philip Kitcher.</p> / Dissertation

Through social learning, animals acquire information from others, such as skills and knowledge about the environment. High fidelity transmission of locally adaptive information can lead to population-specific traits, or cultural traits, which are fundamental to the emergence of culture. Despite social learning being widespread in the animal kingdom, culture is rare in nature. This thesis investigates the evolution, ecology, and dynamics of social learning, to increase our understanding why species differ in their ability to generate and accumulate cultural traits, and ultimately how complex human culture emerged. Chapter 2 introduces a novel computational model that explicitly incorporates competition into the social learning context. The model predicts that social learning is most adaptive where resources are unevenly distributed and stable through time, even if individuals compete for limited resources. The model provides an explanation for reports of animals disregarding social information, even if it is available. Testing these predictions Chapter 3 presents a bumblebee foraging experiment. The results support the theoretical predictions, showing that foragers use social information to find rewarding flowers, even if social cues indicate competition. Chapter 4 further examines the trade-off between access to social information and competition. Individuals that are central in a learning network have more opportunities to acquire information from others, but also face an increased likelihood to engage in competition. The results of this model suggest that across different learning contexts centrality is only beneficial for dominant individuals because dominance can mitigate the effect of competition. This also shows that individual phenotypic differences affect the utility of social information. Chapter 5 uses a dynamic network model approach to tests whether these differences modulate the structure of learning networks and by extension of the population. The model shows that this is the case and that where social learning is favoured by the environment networks are more structured. Chapter 6, studies the drivers behind individual differences in social learning. The chapter focusses on reports of sex differences in social information use and finds that they can be explained by differences in risk taking behaviour. The results highlight the importance of the feedback between learning individuals, and how this shapes social learning dynamics on an individual as well as on a population level.

There is something extraordinary about human culture. The striking complexity of our technologies, institutions, beliefs, and norms has allowed us to colonise the entire planet. One aspect in which human culture is unique relates to its cumulative nature – we accumulate and build on knowledge from the previous generations, leading to incremental improvement in skill, which allows us to produce technologies no one individual could have invented on their own. Understanding the drivers and dynamics of this type of cumulative culture is essential for understanding how human culture has interacted with human evolution. This thesis is concerned with precisely that, and uses a mixture of theoretical and experimental approaches linking individual-level decisions to population-level processes in cumulative culture contexts. Chapter 1 provides some essential background information. In Chapter 2 I used an agent-based simulation model to show that refinement, or incremental improvement in cultural traits, can lead to a drastic decrease of cultural diversity at the population level. This pattern was confirmed using experimental data from a collaborative programming competition in Chapter 3, where I showed that in a cumulative setting, the differential riskiness of copying and innovation drives participants to converge on very similar solutions, leading to a loss of cultural diversity. In Chapter 4 I explored individual differences in social learning strategies, finding considerable variation in how individuals rely on copying, with more successful individuals being more exploratory. I found that successful individuals had more influence on subsequent entries, which is consistent with a prestige bias. Finally, Chapter 5 addressed the link between group structure, diversity, and cumulative improvement. I found that larger groups accumulate more improvement than smaller groups, but smaller groups can also inhibit the convergence patterns we witnessed in larger groups, suggesting an optimal level of connectivity responsible for cumulative improvement.

There is something unique about human culture. Its complex technologies, customs, institutions, symbolisms and norms, which are shared and maintained and improved across countless generations, are what sets it apart from the ‘cultures' of other animals. The fundamental question that researchers are only just beginning to unravel is: How do we account for the gap between their ‘cultures' and ours? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of culture's complex constituent components: from the micro-level psychological mechanisms that guide and facilitate accurate social learning, to the macro-level cultural processes that unfold within large-scale cooperative groups. This thesis attempts to contribute to two broad themes that are of relevance to this question. The first theme involves the evolution of accurate and high-fidelity cultural transmission. In Chapter 2, a meta-analysis conducted across primate social learning studies finds support for the common assumption that imitative and/or emulative learning mechanisms are required for the high-fidelity transmission of complex instrumental cultural goals. Chapter 3, adopting an experimental study with young children, then questions the claim that mechanisms of high-fidelity copying have reached such heights in our own species that they will even lead us to blindly copy irrelevant, and potentially costly, information. The second theme involves investigations of the mutually reinforcing relationship predicted between cultural complexity and ultra-cooperativeness in humans, employing a series of laboratory-based experimental investigations with adults. Chapter 4 finds only limited support for a positive relationship between cooperative behaviour and behavioural imitation, which is believed to facilitate cultural group cohesion. Finally, Chapter 5 presents evidence suggesting that access to cultural information is positively associated with an individual's cooperative reputation, and argues that this dynamic might help to scaffold the evolution of increased cultural complexity and cooperation in a learning environment where cultural information carries high value.

abstract: My dissertation contributes to a body of knowledge useful for understanding the evolution of subsistence economies based on agriculture from those based on hunting and gathering, as well as the development of formal rules and norms of territorial ownership in hunter-gatherer societies. My research specifically combines simple formal and conceptual models with the empirical analysis of large ethnographic and environmental data sets to study feedback processes in coupled forager-resource systems. I use the formal and conceptual models of forager-resource systems as tools that aid in the development of two alternative arguments that may explain the adoption of food production and formal territorial ownership among hunter-gatherers. I call these arguments the Uncertainty Reduction Hypothesis and the Social Opportunity Hypothesis. Based on the logic of these arguments, I develop expectations for patterns of food production and formal territorial ownership documented in the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherer societies and evaluate these expectations with large ethnographic and environmental data sets. My analysis suggests that the Uncertainty Reduction Hypothesis is more consistent with the data than the Social Opportunity Hypothesis. Overall, my approach combines the intellectual frameworks of evolutionary ecology and resilience thinking. The result is a theory of subsistence change that integrates elements of three classic models of economic development with deep intellectual roots in human ecology: The Malthusian, Boserupian and Weberian models. A final take home message of my study is that evolutionary ecology and resilience thinking are complementary frameworks for archaeologists who study the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2014

As idéias cotidianas influenciam a aprendizagem de conceitos científicos e afetam a educação científica da população, de maneira que é imprescindível compreender sua origem e dinâmica de transmissão para o planejamento de políticas educacionais. As teorias de evolução cultural contribuem para o entendimento da origem, fixação e distorções das idéias cotidianas em um grupo social, esclarecendo a dinâmica de propagação das idéias cotidianas. Verificar e documentar a transmissão cultural de conhecimento cotidiano exige a identificação e comparação das idéias cotidianas empregadas pelas pessoas para explicar os fenômenos naturais com os quais entram em contato, de modo a permitir a descrição de padrões. Essa comparação é viabilizada pela codificação das idéias em modelos explicativos delimitados pela descrição de determinados atributos e características da explicação. Esse procedimento torna possível a quantificação e permite o teste de hipóteses de transmissão cultural. Sabendo-se obter e comparar as concepções de uma pessoa é possível investigar toda uma comunidade, rastreando a disseminação dessas idéias, possibilitando assim o estudo da transmissão do conhecimento cotidiano através das gerações. Essa dissertação propõe um protocolo de pesquisa a ser empregado no estudo de transmissão cultural de idéias cotidianas sobre os fenômenos patológicos hereditários a ser realizado em Serrinha dos Pintos e municípios vizinhos (RN), contribuindo para a descrição da diversidade de idéias cotidianas e investigação os processos de transmissão e fixação dessas idéias ao longo das gerações. / The learning of scientific concepts is largely influenced by everyday knowledge. It is therefore necessary to understand its origins and transmission dynamics for the proper planning of educational policies. The theories of cultural evolution contribute to understanding the origin, fixation and distortions of everyday ideas within a social group, explaining the spread dynamics of everyday knowledge. Checking and documenting the cultural transmission of everyday knowledge requires the identification and comparison of ideas used by people to explain natural phenomena with which they come in contact, in order to allow the description of patterns. This comparison is possible by the consolidation of the ideas in explanatory models defined by the description of certain explanation attributes and characteristics. This procedure makes it possible to quantify and allows testing of hypotheses of cultural transmission. The proper collection and comparison of a single person\'s ideas and thoughts enables us to form an idea of the community as a whole and to track the spread of these ideas. Consequently, enables us to study the transmission of everyday knowledge through the generations. This work proposes a research protocol to be used in the study of cultural transmission of ideas on the everyday phenomena of hereditary diseases to be held in Serrinha dos Pintos and neighboring counties (RN), thus contributing to the description of the diversity of everyday ideas and research processes related to the transmission and fixation of these ideas through the generations.

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