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

澳大利亚七弦琴是所有动物中最熟练的模仿者。野生七琴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，而生活在人类附近的七琴鸟则能精确地模仿汽车警报器、电锯甚至相机快门的声音。然而，琴鸟不仅从它们的环境中学习；它们也从其他琴鸟那里学习声音。这种先学习然后发出各种声音的能力与人类学习语言和其他文化组成部分的方式有很多相似之处，这使得琴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本实验，而这在人类身上是不可能的。康奈尔大学的科学家们领导了这个项目，他们将研究在澳大利亚分布范围内的七弦琴，记录它们的学习能力，并追踪它们歌曲中的学习成分。科学家们将进行一系列实验，他们将一首新歌“播种”到一群琴鸟中，并追踪它是如何从一只琴鸟传到另一只琴鸟的，以更好地了解哪些因素在文化学习中是重要的。他们还将利用20世纪30年代引入塔斯马尼亚的一群琴鸟进行历史实验，追踪这些琴鸟是如何在学习新歌曲的同时保留原有歌曲的。该团队将利用七弦琴展示的视频制作各种公共宣传材料，并通过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，但文化、遗传和生态环境之间的相关相互作用仍然知之甚少。社会传播的、多成分的通信系统对于测试有关文化演变的节奏和模式的问题具有特别的价值。该项目利用著名的模仿声乐的琴鸟的壮观展示行为，使用互补的比较方法和基于实地的实验，来测试一系列关于文化进化的节奏和模式的假设。和人类一样，七弦琴也是优秀的声音模仿者。此外，它们使用由模仿和非模仿歌曲组成的多分量信号进行交流，并进行复杂的舞蹈表演。结合有限的分散和大但不完整的分布，这些属性促进了多样化琴鸟“文化”的发展。该项目将首先描述视听曲目的地理差异，并将其与基因组差异和从地方到超种群尺度的差异进行比较，考虑到生态背景。使用存档录音（1932年至今）对声音显示变化的时间分析将补充空间分析，并加强关于琴鸟文化进化的速度和模式的结论。该项目进一步利用了一个偶然的实验，在这个实验中，琴鸟被引入了一个以前没有出现过的岛屿（塔斯马尼亚岛）。比较易位种群和源种群的七琴鸟展示将用于测试不同展示成分的文化不稳定性。最后，通过创新的现场文化传播实验，直接测试琴鸟展示的社会传播机制和文化不稳定性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.