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Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait

Oscine songbirds have been an important study system for social learning, particularly because their learned songs provide an analog for human languages and music. Here, we propose a different analogy: from an evolutionary perspective, could birds’ songs change over time more like arrowheads than ar...

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Autores principales: Hudson, Emily J., Creanza, Nicole
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9324838/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35403212
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/evo.14489
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author Hudson, Emily J.
Creanza, Nicole
author_facet Hudson, Emily J.
Creanza, Nicole
author_sort Hudson, Emily J.
collection PubMed
description Oscine songbirds have been an important study system for social learning, particularly because their learned songs provide an analog for human languages and music. Here, we propose a different analogy: from an evolutionary perspective, could birds’ songs change over time more like arrowheads than arias? Small improvements to a bird's song can lead to large fitness differences for its singer, which could make songs more analogous to human tools than languages. We modify a model of human tool evolution to accommodate cultural evolution of birdsong: each song learner chooses the most skilled available tutor to emulate, and each is more likely to produce an inferior copy than a superior one. Similar to human tool evolution, our model suggests that larger populations of birds could foster improvements in song over time, even when learners restrict their pool of tutors to a subset of individuals in their social network. We also demonstrate that song elements could be simplified instead of lost after population bottlenecks if lower quality traits are easier to imitate than higher quality ones. We show that these processes could plausibly generate empirically observed patterns of song evolution for some song traits, and we make predictions about the types of song elements most likely to be lost when populations shrink. More broadly, we aim to connect the modeling approaches used in human and nonhuman systems, moving toward a cohesive theoretical framework that accounts for both cognitive and demographic processes.
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spelling pubmed-93248382022-07-30 Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait Hudson, Emily J. Creanza, Nicole Evolution Original Articles Oscine songbirds have been an important study system for social learning, particularly because their learned songs provide an analog for human languages and music. Here, we propose a different analogy: from an evolutionary perspective, could birds’ songs change over time more like arrowheads than arias? Small improvements to a bird's song can lead to large fitness differences for its singer, which could make songs more analogous to human tools than languages. We modify a model of human tool evolution to accommodate cultural evolution of birdsong: each song learner chooses the most skilled available tutor to emulate, and each is more likely to produce an inferior copy than a superior one. Similar to human tool evolution, our model suggests that larger populations of birds could foster improvements in song over time, even when learners restrict their pool of tutors to a subset of individuals in their social network. We also demonstrate that song elements could be simplified instead of lost after population bottlenecks if lower quality traits are easier to imitate than higher quality ones. We show that these processes could plausibly generate empirically observed patterns of song evolution for some song traits, and we make predictions about the types of song elements most likely to be lost when populations shrink. More broadly, we aim to connect the modeling approaches used in human and nonhuman systems, moving toward a cohesive theoretical framework that accounts for both cognitive and demographic processes. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022-04-20 2022-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9324838/ /pubmed/35403212 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/evo.14489 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Evolution published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Hudson, Emily J.
Creanza, Nicole
Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
title Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
title_full Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
title_fullStr Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
title_full_unstemmed Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
title_short Modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
title_sort modeling how population size drives the evolution of birdsong, a functional cultural trait
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9324838/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35403212
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/evo.14489
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