Burnell K
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara
Anim Behav. 1998 Oct;56(4):995-1003. doi: 10.1006/anbe.1998.0864.
I used the meme concept to investigate patterns of cultural variation among the songs of eight, geographically distinct populations of savannah sparrows. Memes composed of only one syllable were geographically widespread and randomly distributed among populations, but memes of two-, three- and four-syllables became progressively more restricted in their geographical distribution. Thus, the populations were memetically more similar with respect to one-syllable memes and more divergent with respect to larger memes. These results suggest that differences in memetic mutation rates and susceptibility to loss by memetic drift could be sufficient to create the observed pattern of greater divergence among populations for large memes. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
我运用文化基因概念研究了分布于不同地理区域的八个 Savannah 麻雀种群歌声中的文化变异模式。由单音节构成的文化基因在地理上广泛分布且在种群间随机分布，但双音节、三音节和四音节的文化基因在地理分布上逐渐受到更多限制。因此，就单音节文化基因而言，种群在文化基因方面更为相似，而就较长的文化基因而言则差异更大。这些结果表明，文化基因突变率的差异以及文化基因漂变导致丢失的易感性可能足以造成所观察到的大文化基因在种群间差异更大的模式。版权所有 1998 年动物行为研究协会。
