10.5061/DRYAD.K98SF7M7X
Williams, Heather
0000-0003-0947-6243
Williams College
Scharf, Andrew
0000-0002-1395-5426
University of California, Berkeley
Ryba, Anna R.
Rockefeller University
Ryan Norris, D.
0000-0003-4874-1425
University of Guelph
Mennill, Daniel J.
0000-0001-9314-6700
University of Windsor
Newman, Amy E. M.
University of Guelph
Doucet, Stéphanie M.
University of Windsor
Blackwood, Julie C.
Williams College
Cumulative cultural evolution and mechanisms for cultural selection in
wild bird songs
Dryad
dataset
2022
Savannah sparrow
song
introductory segment
feature replacement
cumulative cultural evolution
FOS: Biological sciences
frequency-dependent selection
drift
Sexual selection
The Mary E. Groff Charitable Trust
https://ror.org/02e63r690
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
https://ror.org/01h531d29
2022-06-20T00:00:00Z
2022-06-20T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6643190
143274614 bytes
9
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Cumulative cultural evolution, the accumulation of sequential changes
within a single socially learned behaviour that results in improved
function, is prominent in humans and has been documented in experimental
studies of captive animals and managed wild populations. Here, we provide
evidence that cumulative cultural evolution has occurred in the learned
songs of Savannah sparrows. In a first step, “click trains” replaced “high
note clusters” over a period of three decades. We use mathematical
modeling to show that this replacement is consistent with the action of
selection, rather than drift or frequency-dependent learning biases.
Generations later, young birds elaborated the “click train” song form by
adding more clicks. We show that the new songs with more clicks elicit
stronger behavioural responses from both males and females. Therefore, we
suggest that a combination of social learning, innovation, and sexual
selection favoring a specific discrete trait was followed by directional
sexual selection that resulted in naturally occurring cumulative cultural
evolution in the songs of this wild animal population.
See the README file for more details. Two data files are associated with
Williams et al., 2022: “Cumulative Cultural Evolution and Mechanisms for
Cultural Selection in Wild Bird Songs”: - Williams et al NCOMMS 2022
data.xls - Song recordings.zip The corresponding author’s email is
hwilliams@williams.edu Data were collected between 1980 and 2013, on Kent
Island, New Brunswick, Canada, the site of the Bowdoin College Scientific
Station. Demographic data were collected by Nat Wheelwright of Bowdoin
College and Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph and their associates.
Kent Island Savannah sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) songs were
recorded by several researchers: Clara Dixon in 1980 and 1982; Nat
Wheelwright and his associates in 1988-9 and 1993-5; Iris Levin in 2003;
Heather Williams in 2004-2010; Heather Williams and Daniel Mennill in
2010-2013. Most of these recordings (and nearly all of them from 1993
onwards) were of birds identified by unique color band combinations, and
demographic data for these birds is known. Some additional data derive
from recordings of birds singing on nearby islands and along the coast of
the Bay of Fundy by Clara Dixon in 1980. Songs were visualized using sound
spectrograms and introductory note types scored by H.W. For additional
information, see the README file associated with this data set.
Williams et al NCOMMS 2022 data.xlsx is a standard excel file. Song
recordings.zip is a compressed file that will, when decompressed, yield a
folder with 21 .WAV sound files. Any standard sound visualization program
can read these files; for example, Audacity (www.audacity.com) is a free,
open-source program that is available for both the PC and the Mac OS
environments.