Cultural Evolution in Parids

Aplin Lab

Mapping the spread of information and emergence of culture

1. How does information spread on social networks?

We are interested how new information spreads on social networks, and how social network structure might affect what information individuals have access to, and the emergent patterning of cultures in populations. We do this work in the wild, with behavioural experiments in our PIT-tagged population of great tits.

In a series of studies, we have shown that once new behaviours are innovated, they can spread rapidly within a single generation to establish as new cultural traits. These traits can then persist over multiple generations of birds, with birds remaining faithful to the cultural variant exhibited in their group.

Further Reading:

Aplin (2017) Understanding the multiple factors governing social learning and the diffusion of innovations. Current Opinions in Behavioral Sciences.

Aplin et al. (2015) Experimentally induced innovations lead to persistent culture via conformity in a wild birds, Nature.

Aplin et al. (2012) Social networks predict patch discovery in a wild population of songbirds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Social network of wild great tits, where red nodes are birds that learned a new cultural trait, and yellow nodes are original innovators.

2. What drives cultural evolution?

In a series of wild experiments, we have shown that tits can faithfully transmit new foraging techniques through social networks to form population-specific traditions that persisted and strengthened over generations. Our work has also begun to reveal that while persistent, these traditions are not static, but exhibit ‘cultural evolution’ in response to drivers such as drift, changing environments, or selection for efficiency. We are currently exploring the links between cultural change, individual heterogeneity, and demography.

We study this both in our wild population of great tits in Moggingen, Germany, and in captivity, with wild birds brought temporarily into outdoor aviary facilities. Combining these two approaches gives us great power to investigate similar questions with both controlled manipulations, and in natural conditions. For both experimental set ups, we use large automated data collection with our custom built hardware and software, including raspberry-pi controlled foraging tasks ("puzzleboxes"), selective feeders that control access to certain individuals, RFID loggers and PIT-tags, and QR-code detection systems.