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

ABSTRACT: 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 impro

SUBMITTER: Hudson EJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9324838 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature