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Author (up) Boyd, R.; Richerson, P.J. url  openurl
  Title Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare Type Journal Article
  Year 1996 Publication Proceedings of the British Academy Abbreviated Journal Proc Br Acad  
  Volume 88 Issue Pages 73-93  
  Keywords cultural distributed evolution primates  
  Abstract If culture is defined as variation acquired and maintained by social learning, then culture is common in nature. However, cumulative cultural evolution resulting in behaviors that no individual could invent on their own is limited to humans, song birds, and perhaps chimpanzees. Circumstantial evidence suggests that cumulative cultural evolution requires the capacity for observational learning. Here, we analyze two models the evolution of psychological capacities that allow cumulative cultural evolution. Both models suggest that the conditions which allow the evolution of such capacities when rare are much more stringent than the conditions which allow the maintenance of the capacities when common. This result follows from the fact that the assumed benefit of the capacities, cumulative cultural adaptation, cannot occur when the capacities are rare. These results suggest why such capacities may be rare in nature.  
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  Publisher Royal Society/British Academy Place of Publication Editor  
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  Notes http://www.proc.britac.ac.uk/cgi-bin/somsid.cgi?page=summaries/pba88#boyd Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4195  
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Author (up) Boyd, R.; Richerson, P.J. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Why does culture increase human adaptability? Type Journal Article
  Year 1995 Publication Ethology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Ethol. a. Sociob.  
  Volume 16 Issue 2 Pages 125-143  
  Keywords Social learning; Adaptation; Culture; Sociobiology  
  Abstract It is often argued that culture is adaptive because it allows people to acquire useful information without costly learning. In a recent paper Rogers (1989) analyzed a simple mathematical model that showed that this argument is wrong. Here we show that Rogers' result is robust. As long as the only benefit of social learning is that imitators avoid learning costs, social learning does not increase average fitness. However, we also show that social learning can be adaptive if it makes individual learning more accurate or less costly.  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4196  
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Author (up) Boyd, R.; Richerson, P.J. url  doi
openurl 
  Title Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups Type Journal Article
  Year 1992 Publication Ethol. Sociobiol. Abbreviated Journal  
  Volume 13 Issue Pages 171-195  
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  Abstract Existing models suggest that reciprocity is unlikely to evolve in large groups as a result of natural selection. In these models, reciprocators punish noncooperation by with-holding future cooperation, and thus also penalize other cooperators in the group. Here, we analyze a model in which the response is some form of punishment that is directed solely at noncooperators. We refer to such alternative forms of punishment as retribution. We show that cooperation enforced by retribution can lead to the evolution of cooperation in two qualitatively different ways. (1) If benefits of cooperation to an individual are greater than the costs to a single individual of coercing the other n − 1 individuals to cooperate, then strategies which cooperate and punish noncooperators, strategies which cooperate only if punished, and, sometimes, strategies which cooperate but do not punish will coexist in the long run. (2) If the costs of being punished are large enough, moralistic strategies which cooperate, punish noncooperators, and punish those who do not punish noncooperators can be evolutionarily stable. We also show, however, that moralistic strategies can cause any individually costly behavior to be evolutionarily stable, whether or not it creates a group benefit.  
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  Notes 10.1016/0162-3095(92)90032-Y Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 4913  
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Author (up) Boyd, R.; Silk, J.B. url  doi
openurl 
  Title A method for assigning cardinal dominance ranks Type Journal Article
  Year 1983 Publication Animal Behaviour. Abbreviated Journal Anim. Behav.  
  Volume 31 Issue 1 Pages 45-58  
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  Abstract Dominance hierarchies are widely described in nature. Commonly, an individual's ordinal rank is used as a measure of its position in the hierarchy, and, therefore its priority of access to resources. This use of ordinal ranks has several related drawbacks: (1) it is difficult to assess the magnitude or the significance of the difference in degree of dominance between two individuals; (2) it is difficult to evaluate the significance of differences between dominance matrices based on different behaviours or on the same behaviour at different times, and (3) it is difficult to use parametric statistical techniques to relate dominance rank to other quantities of interest. In this paper we describe a method for assigning cardinal dominance indices that does not suffer from these drawbacks. This technique is based on the Bradley-Terry model from the method of paired comparisons. We show how this model can be reinterpreted in terms of dominance interactions. and we describe a simple iterative technique for computing cardinal ranks. We then describe how to evaluate (1) whether the rank differences between individuals are significant, and (2) whether differences in the cardinal hierarchies based on different behaviours or the same behaviour at different times are significant. We then show how to generalize the method to deal with behaviours that sometimes have ambiguous outcomes, or behaviours for which the rank difference between a pair of individuals affects the rate of interaction between them.  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 859  
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Author (up) Laland, K. N.; Richerson, P. J.; Boyd, R. openurl 
  Title Developing a theory of animal social learning. Type Book Chapter
  Year 1996 Publication Social learning in animals: the roots of culture. Abbreviated Journal  
  Volume Issue Pages 129-154  
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  Publisher Academic Press Place of Publication San Diego, California Editor Heyes, C. M.;Galef,B. G. J.  
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  Notes Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ home Serial 4093  
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