Social Learning in a Cooperatively Breeding Bird

在合作繁殖的鸟类和哺乳动物中， 以前的育雏推迟独立繁殖，保持与他们的 父母，并协助养育后代。 一个可能 对这种行为的解释是“技能”假说， 认为年轻人需要这段时间来学习技能， 是成功觅食和筑巢的必要条件 使用现场实验和描述技术的混合， Veedercamp博士和她的学生将通过以下方式研究这一过程： 幼鸟在成年期获得觅食技能 合作繁殖的喜鹊，一种聪明的热带品种， 有着极其广泛的饮食和各种各样的 觅食策略 通过确定信息的类型 通过社会学习和促进机制传播 社会学习（复制或模仿）在这个物种，博士。 Veedom阵营将更好地评估相对重要性 个人（试错）学习和社会学习 动物的复杂行为。 最终，这种对动物的研究应该有助于确定 对社会学习的依赖的限制 获得新的行为，因此为什么复制和文化 变异主要是人类的特征。

Among cooperatively-breeding birds and mammals, offspring from previous broods delay independent breeding, remain with their parents, and assist in rearing subsequent broods. One possible explanation for this behavior is the "skills" hypothesis, which argues that young need this period of time to learn the skills required for successful foraging and nesting. Using a mixture of field experimental and descriptive techniques, Dr. Vehrencamp and her students will investigate the process by which young birds acquire adult foraging skills in the cooperatively-breeding magpie jay, an intelligent, tropical species with an extremely broad diet and diverse array of foraging tactics. By determining the types of information transmitted by social learning and the mechanisms that promote social learning (copying or imitation) in this species, Dr. Vehrencamp will be better able to assess the relative importance of individual (trial-and-error) learning and social learning of complex behavior in animals. Ultimately, such research on animals should help to pinpoint the constraints upon the reliance on social learning for the acquisition of novel behavior and thus why copying and cultural variation are primarily human traits.