Tempo and Modes of Cultural Evolution in the Complex Display of the Superb Lyrebird

澳大利亚赖鸟是所有动物中最有成就的模仿者。野生莱茵鸟学会了近乎完美地模仿其他鸟类的叫声和许多其他自然声音，而生活在人附近的莱里鸟则完全模仿汽车报警器、电锯，甚至相机快门。然而，赖雷鸟不仅从它们的环境中学习，它们还从其他赖雷鸟那里学习声音。这种先学习然后发出各种声音的能力与人类学习语言和我们文化的其他组成部分的方式有许多相似之处，这使得莱茵鸟成为一个很好的物种，可以用来进行关于文化学习和信息交流的基础实验，而这在人类受试者身上是不可能的。领导这一项目的康奈尔大学的科学家们将对澳大利亚赖鸟的活动范围进行研究，以记录它们的学习能力，并跟踪它们歌曲中的学习成分。科学家们将进行一系列实验，在这些实验中，他们会将一首新歌“播种”给一群抒情鸟，并追踪这首歌是如何从一种抒情鸟传递给另一种抒情鸟的，以更好地了解哪些因素在文化学习中起着重要作用。他们还将利用一项历史实验，使用20世纪30年代引入塔斯马尼亚的一群赖鸟，追踪这些赖鸟如何在学习新歌的同时保留它们的原始歌曲。该团队将使用Lyrebird展示的视频制作各种公共宣传材料，并通过一个暑期研究项目吸引美国大学生群体。文化进化塑造了许多非人类动物的行为模式，但文化、遗传学和生态环境之间的关联仍然知之甚少。社会传播的多组件通信系统对于测试有关文化进化的节奏和模式的问题特别有价值。该项目利用著名的模仿声乐的极好的莱茵鸟的壮观展示行为，使用互补的比较方法和基于现场的实验来测试关于文化进化的节奏和模式的一系列假说。和人类一样，莱茵鸟也是很好的发声模仿者。此外，他们使用由模仿和非模仿歌曲组成的多分量信号进行交流，并表演复杂的舞蹈表演。结合有限的扩散和大但零星的分布，这些属性促进了不同的赖鸟“文化”的发展。该项目将首先描述视听曲目的地理变异，并将其与基因组变异和从局部种群到集合种群的差异进行比较，考虑到生态环境。利用1932年至今的存档录音，对声学显示的变化进行时间分析，将补充空间分析，并加强关于赖雷鸟文化进化的节奏和模式的结论。该项目进一步利用了一个偶然的实验，在这个实验中，莱茵鸟被引入到一个岛屿(塔斯马尼亚)，在那里它们以前没有出现过。将通过比较移位种群和来源种群中的Lyrebird显示来测试不同显示组件的文化不稳定性。最后，将使用创新的现场文化传播实验直接测试社会传播机制和Lyrebird展示的文化稳定性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Australian lyrebirds are the most accomplished mimics of all animals. Wild lyrebirds learn to sing near-perfect renditions of the calls of other birds and many other natural sounds, while lyrebirds that live near people are exact mimics of car alarms, chainsaws, and even camera shutters. Yet lyrebirds do not learn only from their environment; they also learn sounds from other lyrebirds. This ability to first learn and then produce a great variety of sounds has many parallels to the ways that humans learn language and other components of our cultures, making lyrebirds an excellent species on which to conduct experiments about the basics of cultural learning and information exchange that would be impossible with human subjects. The Cornell University scientists leading this project will study lyrebirds across their range in Australia to document their learning ability and track the learned components of their songs. The scientists will conduct a series of experiments in which they 'seed' a new song into a group of lyrebirds and track how it is passed from one lyrebird to another, to better understand what kinds of factors are important in cultural learning. They will also take advantage of a historical experiment using a population of lyrebirds that was introduced into Tasmania in the 1930s, tracking how these lyrebirds retained their original songs while learning new ones. The team will generate a variety of public outreach materials using videos of lyrebird displays, and engage groups of US college students through a summer research program.Cultural evolution shapes the behavioral repertoires of many non-human animals, but the associated interactions among culture, genetics and ecological context remain poorly understood. Socially transmitted, multicomponent communication systems are of particular value for testing questions about the tempos and modes of cultural evolution. This project leverages the spectacular display behavior of a well-known vocal mimic, the superb lyrebird, to test a series of hypotheses about the tempos and modes of cultural evolution, using complementary comparative approaches and field-based experiments. Like humans, lyrebirds are excellent vocal mimics. In addition, they communicate using multi-component signals made up of both mimetic and non-mimetic song, and perform a complex dance display. Combined with limited dispersal and a large but patchy distribution, these attributes foster the development of diverse lyrebird 'cultures'. This project will first characterize geographic variation in audiovisual repertoires and compare this with genomic variation and divergence from local to metapopulation scales, accounting for ecological context. A temporal analysis of changes in acoustic displays, using archived recordings (1932-present), will complement the spatial analysis and strengthen conclusions regarding the tempo and mode of lyrebird cultural evolution. The project further capitalizes on a serendipitous experiment in which lyrebirds were introduced to an island (Tasmania) where they did not occur previously. Comparisons of lyrebird displays in translocated versus source population will be used to test the cultural lability of different display components. Finally, mechanisms of social transmission, and the cultural lability of lyrebird displays, will be tested directly using innovative field-based cultural transmission experiments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.