The Biology of Traditions Models and Evidence

About this book

Socially maintained behavioural traditions in non-human species hold great interest for biologists, anthropologists and psychologists.

This book treats traditions in non-human species as biological phenomena that are amenable to the comparative methods of inquiry used in contemporary biology. Chapters in the first section define behavioural traditions, and indicate how they can arise in non-human species, how widespread they may be, how they may be recognized and how we can study them. The second part summarizes cutting-edge research programmes seeking to identify traditions in diverse taxa in contributions from leading researchers in this area. The book ends with a comparison and evaluation of the alternative theoretical formulations and their applications presented in the book, and lays out recommendations for future research building on the most promising evidence and lines of thinking.

The Biology of Traditions will be essential reading for students and researchers in the fields of anthropology, biology and psychology.

Paperback re-issue; originally published in 2003.

Contents

Preface Dorothy Fragaszy and Susan Perry; 1. Towards a biology of traditions Dorothy Fragaszy and Susan Perry; 2. What the models say about social learning Kevin N. Laland and Jeremy R. Kendal; 3. Relative brain size and the distribution of innovation and social learning across the non-human primates Simon M. Reader; 4. Social learning about food in birds Louis Lefebvre and Julie Bouchard; 5. The cue reliability approach to social transmission: designing tests for adaptive traditions Gwen Dewar; 6. 'Traditional' foraging behaviors of Brown and Black rats (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus) Bennett G. Galef Jr.; 7. Food for thought: social learning and feeding behavior in Capuchin monkeys: insights from the laboratory Elisabetta Visalberghi and Elsa Addessi; 8. Traditions in mammalian and avian vocal communication Vincent M. Janik and Peter J. B. Slater; 9. Like mother, like calf: the ontogeny of foraging traditions in wild Indian Ocean Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) Janet Mann and Brooke Sargeant; 10. Biological and ecological foundations of primate behavioral tradition Michael A. Huffman and Satoshi Hirata; 11. Local traditions in orangutans and chimpanzees: social learning and social tolerance Carel P. van Schaik; 12. Developmental perspectives on Great Ape tradition Anne E. Russon; 13. Skilled foraging actions by Brown Capuchins in Suriname: are these socially supported and transmitted behaviors? Sue Boinski, Robert P. Quatrone, Karen Sughrue, Lara Selvaggi, MaLinda Henry, Claudia M. Stickler and Lisa M. Rose; 14. Traditions in wild White-faced Capuchin monkeys Susan Perry, Melissa Panger, Lisa Rose, Mary Baker, Julie Gros-Louis, Katherine Jack, Katherine C. MacKinnon, Joseph Manson, Linda Fedigan and Kendra Pyle; 15. Conclusions and research agendas Susan Perry; Further reading; Index.

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Biography

Dorothy M. Fragaszy is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia and Chair of the Biopsychology program. Susan Perry is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Head of the research group for Cultural Phylogeny at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.