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Reconciling community ecology with evidence of animal culture: Socially-adapted, localized community dynamics?

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Abstract

A growing body of empirical research suggests many animal species are capable of social learning and even have cultural behavioral traditions. Social learning has implications for community ecology; changes in behavior can lead to changes in inter- and intra-specific (between and within species) interactions. The paper explores possible implications of social learning for ecological community dynamics. Four arguments are made: (1) social learning can result in locally-specific ecological relationships; (2) socially-mediated, locally-specific ecological relationships can have localized indirect interspecific population effects; (3) the involvement of multiple co-existing species in socially learned, locally-specific behavior has the potential to create community-wide effects, including varying levels of stability and instability; and (4) social learning can create new intra- and inter-specific selection pressures on local taxa, potentially resulting in rapid evolution. Implications of all four arguments are discussed in relation to community ecology research and modeling.

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Notes

  1. For a useful glossary of terms related to animal social learning, see Shettleworth (2010, p. 467) or Hoppitt and Laland (2013).

  2. Whether non-human animals have “culture” in the same sense as human’s is controversial and debated (Laland and Janik 2006). The term “culture” is used here to convey the presence of behavioral traditions transmitted down and/or across populations.

  3. While there is considerable evidence that killer whales are capable of different types of social learning and that they exhibit cultural traditions, it is difficult to definitively state that differences exhibited amongst killer whale sub-populations are indisputably due to cultural transmission, not ecological factors or genetic divergence amongst killer whale lineages. While some may consider this a problem, I adopt Laland and Janik’s (2006) position that cultural traditions cannot always be clearly isolated from genetic and environmental causes. More specifically, killer whales live for relatively long periods of time, making it difficult to study the extent to which socially learned behaviors are transferred from one generation to the next. Likewise, it is difficult to definitively determine how a behavior that already exists first originated. Also, given that it in incredibly difficult to observe possible instances of this behavior being socially transmitted, it is also difficult to determine whether this behavior is indeed transmitted socially. Given that many of these same limitations exist in relation to knowledge about other top predators’ cultural traditions, that experimental evidence supports the claim that killer whales are social learners (e.g. Abramson et al. 2013), and that a constellation of complementary studies exist for allowing a sustained discussion of the relationship between killer whales’ social learning and the direct and indirect effects of this behavior on sea otter—sea urchin—kelp trophic cascade—a situation that is relatively fortuitous—I have opted to use a killer whales’ cultural tradition as the primary example despite this possible shortcoming.

  4. Danchin and Wagner (2010) describe the possibility of rapid evolution in relation to cultural learning. They use the term inclusive heritability to talk about how cultural traditions and genetic composition both act as mechanisms of information transfer and how these two mechanism can interact and form feedback loops in relation to genetic and cultural evolution.

  5. For an earlier version of this argument, along with supporting empirical studies, see Sol and Lefebvre (2000), Sol et al. (2002), and Marino (2005).

  6. For an additional argument about the effects of social learning on evolutionary outcomes, see Fawcett et al. (2012).

  7. For additional suggestions of how changes in behavior can impact food webs, see Abrams (2010) and Araújo et al. (2011). The suggestions made in these sources discuss the impact of flexible behavior and behavioral pluralism, only some of which are socially learned and none of which are explicitly identified as such. Regardless, many of the suggestions are still applicable given that socially-learned behaviours are one possible reason for behavioral diversity. For suggestions that link social learning and culture to issues related to population biology and wildlife management, see Whitehead (2010).

  8. Given that it is often difficult to identify the presence of socially-learned, locally-specific behaviors, community ecologists may profit by teaming up with behavioral ecologists, comparative psychologists and cognitive ethologists who are already involved in identifying these behaviors.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Peter J. Morin, Russel L. Barsh, and three anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

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    Chantelle P. Marlor

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Marlor, C.P. Reconciling community ecology with evidence of animal culture: Socially-adapted, localized community dynamics?. Biol Philos 31, 663–683 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-016-9530-6

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