EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL-LEARNER-EXPLORER STRATEGY IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY HETEROGENEOUS TWO-ISLAND MODEL

• Published in: Evolution Vol. 64; no. 9; pp. 2575 - 2586
• Main Author: Aoki, Kenichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01.09.2010; Wiley Periodicals Inc; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Animals; Asymmetrical individual learning; Biological Evolution; cumulative culture; Evolution; Evolution & development; Evolutionary genetics; Genotype & phenotype; Humans; integer phenotype space; Learning; Learning - physiology; Learning rate; Learning strategies; life-cycle stage dependence; Models, Theoretical; Observational learning; Phenotypes; Social Behavior; Social evolution; Social Isolation; spatially heterogeneous environment; Viability
• ISSN: 0014-3820; 1558-5646
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01017.x

Social-learner-explorer (SE) is a learning strategy that combines accurate social learning with exploratory individual learning in that order. Arguably, it is one of the few plausible learning strategies that can support cumulative culture. We investigate numerically the factors that affect the evolution of SE in an environmentally heterogeneous two-island model. Conditions favorable to the evolution of SE include a small exogenous cost of social learning, the occurrence of migration after social learning but before individual learning, the ability to adaptively modify the behavioral phenotype in the postmigration environment (asymmetrical individual learning), and a relatively high migration rate. The implications of our model for the evolution of SE in humans are discussed. Of particular interest is the prediction that behaviors affecting fitness would have to be socially learned in the natal environment and then subsequently modified by individual learning in the postmigration environment, suggesting a life-cycle stage dependent reliance on the two types of learning.