Siblings and nonparental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits

Abstract

In many animal species, the juvenile period is under strong selection, leading to a concentration of social learning during this stage as an efficient strategy for young individuals to acquire skills essential for survival. However, as social learning is not always adaptive, juveniles need to be strategic in when, who, and what to copy. In species with extended parental care, parents are often preferred sources of information, leading to stable intergenerational transmission of knowledge. However, little is known about transmission pathways in species with limited periods of parental care, and their implication for cultural inheritance. Here, we investigate social learning strategies during development in a model species with a dependence period of a few weeks, the great tit (Parus major). Using fully automated two-option foraging puzzles, we diffused knowledge about the puzzle through breeding populations and then constrained parental individuals’ choices such that parents either (1) both had knowledge of the same option, (2) had conflicting knowledge of the two options, or (3) had no knowledge of how to solve the puzzle. We then tracked solving behavior of 229 newly fledged juveniles over 10 weeks. Parental solving frequency during dependence strongly predicted knowledge acquisition by offspring, suggesting intergenerational cultural inheritance. However, detailed investigation of learning pathways revealed siblings as the most important role models for social learning, followed by nonparental adults and parents. Furthermore, offsprings’ option choices were not predicted by parental choices, but instead influenced by the broader social environment, with evidence for a conformist learning bias. Overall, by using large-scale experimental manipulation of parental behavior, our study offers new insights into social learning pathways and mechanisms of cultural inheritance in r-selected species with limited parental care and multiple offspring. Our findings provide a stark contrast to most previously studied systems exhibiting multigenerational cultures, where cultural transmission overwhelmingly occurs from parents to offspring, and give insights into the more variable transmission routes that might occur across socially learning species.