Presentation Details
| Birdsong and functional layering in learned traits Franny Geller. |
Abstract
The field of cultural evolution spans diverse disciplines, and differing emphases on the hallmarks of cultural change pose a challenge for the integration of ideas. The single-domain social learning of oscine songbirds, for instance, bears little apparent resemblance to the vast learned repertoires of humans. However, the evolved functions of individual invention and social learning are shared among cultural species irrespective of the complexity of their manifestations. I therefore argue that the stages of cultural development and evolution conform to a broad, taxon-general timeline, focusing in particular on analogous trends in learned oscine and human vocal communication. My proposed framework encompasses the products of individual creativity that become socially learned innovations, the sequential appearance of pragmatic and aesthetic vocal culture and the cultural evolutionary paths that differentiate the two, and, finally, the role of sexual selection in co-opting communicatory traits as honest signals of condition. My aim is to unify some of the disparate claims of cultural evolutionary theory by identifying comparable patterns across distant taxa.
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