Multilevel animal societies can emerge from cultural transmission
#MMPMID26348688
Cantor M
; Shoemaker LG
; Cabral RB
; Flores CO
; Varga M
; Whitehead H
Nat Commun
2015[Sep]; 6
(?): 8091
PMID26348688
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Multilevel societies, containing hierarchically nested social levels, are
remarkable social structures whose origins are unclear. The social relationships
of sperm whales are organized in a multilevel society with an upper level
composed of clans of individuals communicating using similar patterns of clicks
(codas). Using agent-based models informed by an 18-year empirical study, we show
that clans are unlikely products of stochastic processes (genetic or cultural
drift) but likely originate from cultural transmission via biased social learning
of codas. Distinct clusters of individuals with similar acoustic repertoires,
mirroring the empirical clans, emerge when whales learn preferentially the most
common codas (conformism) from behaviourally similar individuals (homophily).
Cultural transmission seems key in the partitioning of sperm whales into
sympatric clans. These findings suggest that processes similar to those that
generate complex human cultures could not only be at play in non-human societies
but also create multilevel social structures in the wild.
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