Whiten Andrew
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK.
Interface Focus. 2017 Oct 6;7(5):20160142. doi: 10.1098/rsfs.2016.0142. Epub 2017 Aug 18.
By the mid-twentieth century (thus following the 'Modern Synthesis' in evolutionary biology), the behavioural sciences offered only the sketchy beginnings of a scientific literature documenting evidence for cultural inheritance in animals-the transmission of traditional behaviours via learning from others (social learning). By contrast, recent decades have seen a massive growth in the documentation of such cultural phenomena, driven by long-term field studies and complementary laboratory experiments. Here, I review the burgeoning scope of discoveries in this field, which increasingly suggest that this 'second inheritance system', built on the shoulders of the primary genetic inheritance system, occurs widely among vertebrates and possibly in invertebrates too. Its novel characteristics suggest significant implications for our understanding of evolutionary biology. I assess the extent to which this second system extends the scope of evolution, both by echoing principal properties of the primary, organic evolutionary system, and going beyond it in significant ways. This is well established in human cultural evolution; here, I address animal cultures more generally. The further major, and related, question concerns the extent to which the consequences of widespread animal cultural transmission interact with the primary, genetically based inheritance systems, shaping organic evolution.
到20世纪中叶（因此是在进化生物学的“现代综合论”之后），行为科学仅提供了科学文献的粗略开端，用以记录动物文化传承的证据——即通过向其他个体学习（社会学习）来传递传统行为。相比之下，近几十年来，在长期的野外研究和补充性实验室实验的推动下，此类文化现象的记录有了大量增长。在此，我回顾了该领域迅速发展的发现范围，这些发现越来越表明，这个建立在主要遗传继承系统基础之上的“第二继承系统”，在脊椎动物中广泛存在，甚至可能在无脊椎动物中也存在。其新颖的特征对我们理解进化生物学具有重大意义。我评估了这个第二系统在多大程度上扩展了进化的范围，既通过呼应主要的有机进化系统的主要特性，又以重要的方式超越了它。这在人类文化进化中已得到充分证实；在此，我更广泛地探讨动物文化。另一个主要且相关的问题是，广泛存在的动物文化传播的后果在多大程度上与主要的基于基因的继承系统相互作用，从而塑造有机进化。
