對人和對其他動物來說，我們都傾向于認(rèn)為文化是某種通過社會學(xué)習(xí)傳播的東西,。但文化多樣性之某些方面的物種特性以及某一特定物種不同個體之間的差異都表明,，文化的根源可能在于基因,。
Fehér等人通過分析斑胸草雀的一個海島群落中通過社會形式學(xué)到的鳥鳴的形成過程，對后一個問題進(jìn)行了探討,。雖然這個群落最初的創(chuàng)始成員在發(fā)育過程中從未接受過鳴叫輔導(dǎo),，而且其叫聲與野生型有顯著不同，在僅僅經(jīng)過三代或四代之后,，輔導(dǎo)產(chǎn)生的叫聲就會接近野生型的叫聲,。這些發(fā)現(xiàn)表明，物種特異性鳴叫文化可以從頭形成,，這與尼加拉瓜人手語的從頭演化非常相似,，該手語由馬那瓜的聾兒自發(fā)形成，與口頭語言在語法上具有相似性,。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦原始出處：
Nature 459, 564-568 (28 May 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07994
De novo establishment of wild-type song culture in the zebra finch
Olga Fehér1, Haibin Wang2, Sigal Saar1, Partha P. Mitra2 & Ofer Tchernichovski1
1 Department of Biology, City College, City University of New York, New York 10031, USA
2 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA
Culture is typically viewed as consisting of traits inherited epigenetically, through social learning. However, cultural diversity has species-typical constraints1, presumably of genetic origin. A celebrated, if contentious, example is whether a universal grammar constrains syntactic diversity in human languages2. Oscine songbirds exhibit song learning and provide biologically tractable models of culture: members of a species show individual variation in song3 and geographically separated groups have local song dialects4, 5. Different species exhibit distinct song cultures6, 7, suggestive of genetic constraints8, 9. Without such constraints, innovations and copying errors should cause unbounded variation over multiple generations or geographical distance, contrary to observations9. Here we report an experiment designed to determine whether wild-type song culture might emerge over multiple generations in an isolated colony founded by isolates, and, if so, how this might happen and what type of social environment is required10. Zebra finch isolates, unexposed to singing males during development, produce song with characteristics that differ from the wild-type song found in laboratory11 or natural colonies. In tutoring lineages starting from isolate founders, we quantified alterations in song across tutoring generations in two social environments: tutor–pupil pairs in sound-isolated chambers and an isolated semi-natural colony. In both settings, juveniles imitated the isolate tutors but changed certain characteristics of the songs. These alterations accumulated over learning generations. Consequently, songs evolved towards the wild-type in three to four generations. Thus, species-typical song culture can appear de novo. Our study has parallels with language change and evolution12, 13, 14. In analogy to models in quantitative genetics15, 16, we model song culture as a multigenerational phenotype partly encoded genetically in an isolate founding population, influenced by environmental variables and taking multiple generations to emerge.
