Inkawu Vervet Project, Mawana Game Reserve, KwaZulu Natal, 3115, South Africa.
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2021 May 18;11(1):9550. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-88857-6.
Social learning-learning from others-is the basis for behavioural traditions. Different social learning strategies (SLS), where individuals biasedly learn behaviours based on their content or who demonstrates them, may increase an individual's fitness and generate behavioural traditions. While SLS have been mostly studied in isolation, their interaction and the interplay between individual and social learning is less understood. We performed a field-based open diffusion experiment in a wild primate. We provided two groups of vervet monkeys with a novel food, unshelled peanuts, and documented how three different peanut opening techniques spread within the groups. We analysed data using hierarchical Bayesian dynamic learning models that explore the integration of multiple SLS with individual learning. We (1) report evidence of social learning compared to strictly individual learning, (2) show that vervets preferentially socially learn the technique that yields the highest observed payoff and (3) also bias attention toward individuals of higher rank. This shows that behavioural preferences can arise when individuals integrate social information about the efficiency of a behaviour alongside cues related to the rank of a demonstrator. When these preferences converge to the same behaviour in a group, they may result in stable behavioural traditions.
社会学习——向他人学习——是行为传统的基础。不同的社会学习策略（SLS），即个体根据行为的内容或示范者有偏差地学习行为，可能会提高个体的适应性并产生行为传统。虽然 SLS 大多是孤立地研究，但它们之间的相互作用以及个体学习和社会学习之间的相互作用了解较少。我们在野外灵长类动物中进行了一项基于现场的开放式扩散实验。我们为两组长尾猕猴提供了一种新的食物，未去壳的花生，并记录了三种不同的花生开壳技术在群体内的传播情况。我们使用层次贝叶斯动态学习模型分析数据，该模型探索了多种 SLS 与个体学习的整合。我们（1）报告了与严格的个体学习相比，有社会学习的证据，（2）表明长尾猕猴更倾向于通过社会学习来获得最高的观察收益，（3）还会将注意力偏向于等级较高的个体。这表明，当个体将有关行为效率的社会信息与与示范者等级相关的线索结合起来时，行为偏好就会产生。当这些偏好在群体中趋同于相同的行为时，它们可能导致稳定的行为传统。
