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

澳大利亚的琴鸟是所有动物中最擅长模仿的。野生琴鸟学会了唱出其他鸟类的叫声和许多其他自然声音的近乎完美的再现，而生活在人类附近的琴鸟则精确地模仿汽车警报器，电锯，甚至相机快门。然而，琴鸟不仅从环境中学习，它们还从其他琴鸟那里学习声音。这种先学习，然后产生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，使琴鸟成为一种优秀的物种，可以进行关于文化学习和信息交换的基本实验，这在人类受试者身上是不可能的。领导这个项目的康奈尔大学科学家将在澳大利亚研究琴鸟，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，在实验中，他们将一首新歌“播种”到一群琴鸟中，并跟踪它是如何从一只琴鸟传递到另一只琴鸟的，以更好地了解哪些因素在文化学习中很重要。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的历史实验，跟踪这些琴鸟如何在学习新歌的同时保留原来的歌曲。该团队将利用琴鸟展示的视频制作各种公共宣传材料，并通过暑期研究计划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剧目，但文化，遗传学和生态环境之间的相关相互作用仍然知之甚少。社会传播，多成分的通信系统是特别有价值的测试问题的节奏和模式的文化演变。这个项目利用一个著名的声乐模仿，高超的琴鸟，壮观的显示行为，以测试一系列的假设的节奏和文化进化的模式，使用互补的比较方法和实地实验。和人类一样，琴鸟也是出色的声音模仿者。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。结合有限的传播和一个大的，但不完整的分布，这些属性促进了不同的琴鸟“文化”的发展。该项目将首先描述视听剧目的地理变异，并将其与基因组变异和从地方到集合种群尺度的分歧进行比较，并考虑生态背景。声学显示的变化，使用存档录音（1932年至今）的时间分析，将补充空间分析，并加强关于琴鸟文化进化的克里思和模式的结论。该项目进一步利用了一个偶然的实验，在这个实验中，琴鸟被引入了一个岛屿（塔斯马尼亚岛），在那里它们以前没有出现过。琴鸟显示在易位与源人口的比较将被用来测试不同的显示组件的文化不稳定性。最后，社会传播机制和琴鸟展示的文化不稳定性，将直接使用创新的基于实地的文化传播实验进行测试。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.