Kenworthy, Simon Paul;
(2025)
The Evolution of Culture in Heterogeneous Social Networks: A Comparative Approach.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Preview |
Text
Kenworthy_10210650_thesis_revised.pdf Download (38MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The evolution of culture is reliant upon the social transmission of novel behaviours. The transmission of social behaviours via social learning is not always guaranteed, as individual heterogeneity impacts how animals use social information. This in turn influences how cultural behaviours do or do not spread (chapter 1). In this thesis, I addressed the representation of taxonomic groups in social learning literature, as well as tasks presented and in what setting, to compare social learning use and evaluate commonalities and disparities (chapter 2). I identified significant biases in taxonomic spread, task presented and experimental setting across comparative studies. I then addressed the possible constraints on the evolution of culture in chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) by presenting the first multi-touchscreen, multi-task (easy and difficult task) experiment to wild primates. I assessed whether age, sex or rank impacted: the participation in novel touchscreen tasks (chapter 3), their success in completing novel tasks (chapter 4), and whether they acquired task behaviours via asocial or social learning (chapter 5). The easier task showed greatest participation and performance measures across all baboons, evidencing greater task success on simpler tasks (chapter 3). However, task success occurred mainly via asocial learning. There were three main barriers to information flow. Firstly, those who were most likely to observe others (young individuals) did not access the tasks to apply social information. Secondly producers of social information of high quantity (older individuals and males) and high quality (older and dominant individuals) were only observed by other touchscreen users, trapping social information. Thirdly, the presence of high-ranking individuals prevented the effective application of social information by low-ranking individuals. Overall, I argue that barriers relating to the varying use of social information by use heterogenous actors limits the emergence and persistence of group-level culture in baboons.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The Evolution of Culture in Heterogeneous Social Networks: A Comparative Approach |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210650 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
