Learning Landscapes How Social Structures Shape the Transmission of Complex Cultural Behaviors
Complex, coordinated behaviors—ones requiring different individuals to take on different roles—emerge in some animal societies but not others. This project investigates how social structure shapes what and how animals learn from one another.
Culture, defined as information or behavior acquired from others through social learning, is widespread across the animal kingdom. Societies vary widely in social organization, from largely solitary species, to stable matrilineal groups, to fluid fission–fusion systems where composition can shift by the hour, each shaping learning opportunities and who learns from whom. Yet it remains unclear why particular cultural behaviors, such as coordinated actions requiring different roles, emerge in some social systems but not others.
This project aims to uncover how social structure shapes the pathways and biases of social learning, and whether complex, coordinated behaviors emerge more readily in socially complex systems. It combines a cross-taxa comparative synthesis with a high-resolution study of a unique foraging behavior—driver–barrier feeding, with role specialization—in bottlenose dolphins.