How copying affects the amount, evenness and persistence of cultural knowledge: insights from the social learning strategies tournament

摘要: Darwinian processes should favour those individuals that deploy the most effective strategies for acquiring information about their environment. We organized a computer-based tournament to investigate which learning would perform well in changing The successful relied almost exclusively on social (here, behaviour performed by another individual) rather than asocial learning, even when environments were rapidly; moreover, focused effort periods of environmental change. Here, we use data from simulations examine how these might affect cultural evolution, as reflected amount culture (i.e. number traits) population, distribution traits across individuals, and persistence through time. found high levels are associated with larger more persistent knowledge, but smaller less expressed behaviour, uneven distributions concentrated exploiting subset patterns. Increased rates change generated increases evenness behaviour. These observations suggest copying confers populations an adaptive plasticity, allowing them respond rapidly drawing wider knowledge base.