Although no one disputes that the transmission of culture depends on social learning, a capacity that has enabled humans, unlike other animals, to modify cultural practices across generations, this review argues that cultural change can also be evoked by environmental events leading to an alteration in the configuration of an habitual behavioural repertoire. An evoked mechanism allows latent or normally suppressed behaviour to emerge. Cannibalism and warfare are put forward as examples. Evoked mechanisms have largely been ignored by one of the few attempts to reconcile biology and culture, namely cumulative cultural evolution (CCE). This review endorses CCE\'s aim of developing a biocultural conceptual framework but criticises this model for failing to produce a credible analysis of culture into \'units\' or \'variants\'. The critique of CCE is situated within a discussion of the long-standing separation within academia of science and arts disciplines, each focusing at different levels of analysis and with different aims. It is suggested that the main obstacle to developing a biocultural framework can be attributed to an incompatibility between nomothetic and idiographic research methods, the former being typical of the biological sciences, the latter of the arts. A successful biocultural conceptual framework would therefore have to accommodate the particular and the general. It is suggested that progress in this direction would be made if agreement could be reached on ways of observing or inferring behaviours rather than pursuing an analysis in terms of hypothetical constructs such as mental representations or units of \'cultural information\'.

If the traits of more successful individuals are more likely to be adopted, the resulting cultural transmission is described as success biased. In contrast, if the traits of \'prestigious\' individuals-those who have already been copied many times-are more likely to be adopted, this is described as prestige-biased cultural transmission. In this case, prestige can be a convenient proxy for success. However, it is unclear how success and prestige biases interact to determine the outcome of cultural evolutionary dynamics. Here, we aim to clarify this using mathematical analysis and stochastic simulations. We find analytic approximations to the stochastic role-model choice process that facilitate the mathematical analysis and reduce the computational complexity of simulations. Approximations are given to the fixation probability and the fixation time of an invading cultural trait in different environments. Our results show that success bias effectively plays the role of natural selection, whereas prestige bias effectively plays the role of genetic drift. Prestige bias, which may be strong in highly social communities, also accelerates the evolutionary dynamics, as expected in a rich-get-richer process. These results signify a step forward in understanding how different cultural transmission biases interact.

Being exposed to bullfighting during childhood generates a growing social debate, that stirs up both opposing and supporting arguments that confront cultural transmission with the protection of childhood. This study seeks to analyze how viewing bullfighting shows affects the emotional well-being of Spanish and Portuguese children. Children who had watched bullfighting shows were compared to others who had never watched them. For the accomplishment of this study, 128 children took part, of which 84 were Portuguese and 44 were Spanish. Overall, 86 children had watched bullfighting shows and 42 had not. The scores related to problem-focused coping, positive affect, active resolution, and seeking information and guidance were significantly higher in those children who had watched bullfighting shows. No significant differences were found related to nationality. The cognitive interpretation of this real and/or audiovisual content and the need to continue studying this practice is under discussion.

Various selection pressures have shaped human uniqueness, for instance, music. When and why did musical universality and diversity emerge? Our hypothesis is that \"music\" initially originated from manipulative calls with limited musical elements. Thereafter, vocalizations became more complex and flexible along with a greater degree of social learning. Finally, constructed musical instruments and the language faculty resulted in diverse and context-specific music. Music precursors correspond to vocal communication among nonhuman primates, songbirds, and cetaceans. To place this scenario in hominin history, a three-phase scheme for music evolution is presented herein. We emphasize (1) the evolution of sociality and life history in australopithecines, (2) the evolution of cognitive and learning abilities in early/middle Homo, and (3) cultural evolution, primarily in Homo sapiens. Human musical capacity and products should be due to the hominin-specific combination of several biosocial features, including bipedalism, stable pair bonding, alloparenting, expanded brain size, and sexual selection.

BACKGROUND: The life cycle of most baleen whales involves annual migrations from low-latitude breeding grounds to high latitude feeding grounds. In most species, these migrations are traditionally considered to be carried out according to information acquired through vertical social learning during the first months of life and made individually. However, some recent studies have suggested a more complex scenario, particularly for the species of the Balaenoptera genus.
METHODS: Here, we studied the variation of δ15N and δ13C values along the growth axis of the baleen plate from 24 fin whales feeding off western Iceland to delve into their pattern of movements and to identify potential associations between individuals. The segment of baleen plate analyzed informed about at least two complete migratory cycles. We performed cluster analyses through two different methodologies and, whenever possible, we genotyped 20 microsatellite loci to determine potential existence of kinship.
RESULTS: Results of the of δ15N and δ13C values agree with a dispersion strategy in the winter breeding grounds. However, and despite the overall large variability, several pairs or groups of individuals with no kinship showed highly similar isotopic patterns for two consecutive years for both δ15N and δ13C values.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that, notably, some whales without kinship share the same migratory regime and destinations. We hypothesize that this could reflect either: (i) the sharing of particularly beneficial migratory regimes, and/or (ii) long-term association between individuals.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the milk processing system practiced in the Mongolian nomadic Khalkha groups of Su\'qbaatar and Dornod Provinces in eastern Mongolia through a field survey, to compare it with surrounding areas of Qentiy and Dundgowi Provinces, and then to analyze the transmission of processing techniques by further comparison with those of Syria, Jordan, Iran and Iraq in West Asia. The milk processing techniques of fermentation, cream separation and additive coagulation are all used in Su\'qbaatar and Dornod Provinces. In fermentation processes, the technique of alcohol fermentation with churning is mainly used for cow milk to process alcoholic sour milk, followed by further processing to spirit, butter oil and non-matured dry cheese. In cream separation processes, the technique of heating/cream separation is used, in which cream is first separated from milk and non-matured dry cheese is processed from skim milk. In additive coagulation processes, the technique of fermented milk coagulation which utilizes lactic acid fermented whey as a coagulant is used to process non-matured dry cheese. These techniques are widely shared in the eastern part of Mongolia. It is characteristic of Su\'qbaatar Province that the processing of cow milk is dominated by the technique of fermentation processes, mainly alcohol fermentation with churning. It is presumed that the technique of churning sour milk transmitted from West Asia to eastern Mongolia, and then the function of churning originally for butter processing was converted to allow for alcohol fermentation under the cooler environment in North Asia.

We investigated indirect genetic effects (IGEs), also known as genetic nurture, in education with a novel approach that uses phased data to include parent-offspring pairs in the transmitted/nontransmitted study design. This method increases the power to detect IGEs, enhances the generalizability of the findings, and allows for the study of effects by parent-of-origin. We validated and applied this method in a family-based subsample of adolescents and adults from the Lifelines Cohort Study in the Netherlands (N = 6147), using the latest genome-wide association study data on educational attainment to construct polygenic scores (PGS). Our results indicated that IGEs play a role in education outcomes in the Netherlands: we found significant associations of the nontransmitted PGS with secondary school level in youth between 13 and 24 years old as well as with education attainment and years of education in adults over 25 years old (β = 0.14, 0.17 and 0.26, respectively), with tentative evidence for larger maternal IGEs. In conclusion, we replicated previous findings and showed that including parent-offspring pairs in addition to trios in the transmitted/nontransmitted design can benefit future studies of parental IGEs in a wide range of outcomes.

We introduce a mathematical model of cultural evolution to study cultural traits that shape how individuals exchange information. Current theory focuses on traits that influence the reception of information (receiver traits), such as evaluating whether information represents the majority or stems from a trusted source. Our model shifts the focus from the receiver to the sender of cultural information and emphasizes the role of sender traits, such as communicability or persuasiveness. Here, we show that sender traits are probably a stronger driving force in cultural evolution than receiver traits. While receiver traits evolve to curb cultural transmission, sender traits can amplify it and fuel the self-organization of systems of mutually supporting cultural traits, including traits that cannot be maintained on their own. Such systems can reach arbitrary complexity, potentially explaining uniquely human practical and mental skills, goals, knowledge and creativity, independent of innate factors. Our model incorporates social and individual learning throughout the lifespan, thus connecting cultural evolutionary theory with developmental psychology. This approach provides fresh insights into the trait-individual duality, that is, how cultural transmission of single traits is influenced by individuals, who are each represented as an acquired system of cultural traits.

Prey species commonly assess predation risk based on acoustic signals, such as predator vocalizations or heterospecific alarm calls. The resulting risk-sensitive decision-making affects not only the behavior and life-history of individual prey, but also has far-reaching ecological consequences for population, community, and ecosystem dynamics. Although auditory risk recognition is ubiquitous in animals, it remains unclear how individuals gain the ability to recognize specific sounds as cues of a threat. Here, it has been shown that free-living birds (Wood Warblers Phylloscopus sibilatrix) can learn to recognize unfamiliar, complex sounds (samples of punk rock songs) as cues of a threat from conspecifics holding adjacent territories during the spring breeding season. In a playback experiment, Wood Warblers initially ignored the unfamiliar sounds, but after repeatedly hearing that these sounds trigger alarm calling reaction of neighbors, most individuals showed an anti-predator response to them. Moreover, once learned soon after nestlings hatching, the anti-predator response of parents toward previously unfamiliar sounds was then retained over the entire nestlings rearing period. These results demonstrate that social learning via the association of unfamiliar sounds with known alarm signals enables the spread of anti-predator behavior across territory borders and provides a mechanism explaining the widespread abilities of animals to assess predation risk based on acoustic cues.

Prior research into the socialization of religious values between religious parents and their children indicates that, in homogeneous religious family groups, there are similarities between the religious values of religious parents and those of their children. Research further shows that, in religious-secular heterogeneous family groups, there is a significant distance between the religious parent and their teenagers in terms of religious values. The purpose of this study is to explore the transmission of religious values in homogeneous Modern-Orthodox family groups and in heterogeneous Modern-Orthodox-secular family groups in Israel. Results of the study show that religious distance in values is not dependent on the family type (homogeneous/heterogeneous). However, it appears that, when the transmitter of religious values is a religious parent in both homogeneous and heterogeneous religious and religious-secular family groups, there is a distance in the socialization of religious values between religious parent and their children. Moreover, the study proposes that the effect sizes are smaller in the parent-child religious distance of values in homogeneous Modern-Orthodox family groups in comparison to the parent child religious distance of values in heterogeneous Modern-Orthodox-secular family groups. This study provides support for recent research, suggesting that the transmission of religiosity from parents to their children might function as a mechanism of secularization.