Roatti, Vittoria; (2024) Understanding constraints on horizontal and vertical information transmission in baboons: implications for the evolution of culture. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Culture involves the social transmission of information between individuals. Immature individuals may have a fundamental role in the formation of culture because they learn socially more than adults. This learning facilitates both information spread at the group level and its maintenance across generations. Baboons, group-living primates, represent an interesting study case because they innovate and readily learn socially, but they are not generally considered a species with culture (Chapter 1). In this thesis, I addressed the possible constraints on social learning in wild immature chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). I describe how social networks, and thus opportunities for social learning, change during development and are influenced by maternal social features (Chapters 2 and 3); how social learning evolves throughout the immature period and from whom immatures learn (Chapter 4); and how maternal warmth, a component of maternal style linked to social learning propensity, influences the offspring’s tendency to acquire social information (Chapter 5). Immature baboons tended to both associate and learn from members of their matriline (close maternal kin), potentially limiting information spread at the group level. Juvenile males could intensify matrilineal clustering by associating and learning from same-sex peers more than females. The steep dominance gradient present in most baboon species may further hinder social information diffusion by promoting learning from close kin. There was no effect of maternal warmth on an offspring’s tendency to learn socially. Overall, I argue that the emergence of group-level cultures in baboons, and other female-philopatric primates, may be constrained by the social clustering of their matriline-based networks. However, the question remains about whether behaviours that are socially transmitted and maintained within matrilines qualify as culture, as is the case for socially transmitted and maintained group behaviours.

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