PSGB Winter Meeting 1996

THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON

with

THE MAMMAL SOCIETY

and

THE PRIMATE SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

Symposium

SOCIAL LEARNING AMONG MAMMALS

PROGRAMME: 29 NOVEMBER

09.20 Organizer's introduction

Chairman: K. GIBSON

09.30 H. BOX Social learning - a functional approach

10.00 P. LEE & C. MOSS Social development, behavioural complexity and cognition among wild African elephants

10.30 J. & S. HEIMLICH-BORAN Social learning in cetaceans: hunting, hearing and hierarchies

11.00 COFFEE

Chairman A. WHITEN

11.30 V. JANIK Origins and implications of vocal learning in bottlenose dolphins

12.00 S. BEARDER Social learning in prosimians

12.30 B.J. KING New directions in the study of primate social learning

13.00 AGM, Primate Society of Great Britain

LUNCH

Chairman: R. DUNBAR

14.30 R. BYRNE The implications of social learning in great apes

15.00 K. GIBSON Human social learning in evolutionary perspective

15.30 S. SHENNAN & J. STEELE Cultural learning in hominid societies: a behavioural ecology approach

16.00 TEA

Chairman: H. BOX

16.30 Primate Society of Great Britain Osman Hill Lecture

T. ROWELL The myth of peculiar primates

17.30 Session ends

PROGRAMME: 30 NOVEMBER

Chairman: C. HEYES

09.30 K. LALAND Exploring the dynamics of social transmission with Norway rats

10.00 G. WILKINSON & J. BOUGHMAN Social influences on foraging in bats

10.30 B. GILBERT Idiosyncratic social learning in bears: an ecocultural hypothesis

11.00 COFFEE

Chairman: S. MITHEN

11.30 D. KLEIN Comparative social learning among Arctic herbivores--the caribou, muskox and Arctic hare

12.00 D.M. BROOM Social transfer of information in domestic animals

12.30 R. SIBLY Evolutionary biology of skill and information transfer

13.00 LUNCH

Chairman: P. SLATER

14.30 J.M. PACKARD Social context of learning in wolf families: developmental perspectives

15.00 J.A.J. NEL Social learning in canids: an ecological perspective

15.30 A.C. KITCHENER Watch with mother: a review of social learning in the Felidae

16.00 TEA

Chairman: H. BOX

16.30 Primate Society of Great Britain Award of the Conservation Medal

J. GOODALL Cultural transmission amongst chimpanzees and conservation

17.30 Symposium closes

CONTRIBUTORS

DR S. BEARDER, Dept of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Gypsy Lane, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK

DR H. BOX, Dept of Psychology, University of Reading, 3 Earley Gate. Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AL, UK.

PROFESSOR D.M. BROOM, Dept of Clinical & Veterinary Medicine. University' of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 OES, UK.

DR R. BYRNE, Scottish Primate Research Group, Dept of Psychology. University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY 16 SITS, Scotland, UK.

PROF. R. DUNBAR, Dept of Psychology, University of Liverpool, PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK.

PROF. K. GIBSON, Dept of Basic Sciences, University of Texas at Houston Dental Branch, PO Box 60028, Houston, TX 77225, USA.

DR B. GILBERT, Dept of Fisheries & Wildlife and Ecology Center. Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-4210, USA.

DR J. GOODALL, CBE, The Jane Goodall Institute (UK), 15 Clarendon Park, Lymington, Hants SO41 8AX, UK.

DR J. HEIMLICH-BORAN, Dept of Zoology, University of Cambridge. Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK.

DR S. HEIMI.ICH-BORAN. Sea Mammal Research Institute, NERC British Antarctic Survey. Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK.

DR C. HEYES, Dept of Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC I E 6BT, UK.

DR V. M. JANIK, School of Biological & Medical Sciences, University of St.Andrews, St.Andrews, Fife KY16 9TS, Scotland, UK

DR B.J. KING, Dept of Antbropology, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg. VA 23187-8795, USA.

DR A C. KITCHENER National Museums of Scotland, Chambers Street. Edinburgh EH1 1JF, Scotland, UK.

DR D. KLEIN, Alaska Cooperative Fish & Wildlffe Research Unit, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA

DR K. LALAND. Sub-Dept of Animal Behaviour, University of Cambridge. Madingley. Cambridge CB3 BAA. UK.

DR P. LEE, Dept of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK

DR S. MITHEN, Dept of Archaeology, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 2AL. UK.

DR C. MOSS Amboseli Elephant Research Project, African Wildlife Foundation, PO Box 48177, Nairobi, Kenya.

PROF. J.A.J. NEL Dept of Zoology, University of Stellenbosch, Private Bag X 1. Matieland. 7602 South Africa.

DR J. M PACKARD, Dept of Wildlife & Fish Sciences. Texas A & M University. College Station. TX 77843-2258. USA

DR T. ROWELL West Chapel House, Chapel-le-Dale, Ingleton via Carnforth. LA6 3JG. UK.

DR S. SHENNAN, Institute of Archaeology, University College London. 31-34 Gordon Square. London WCIE 0PY, UK.

PROF R. SIBLY, School of Animal & Microbial Sciences, University of Reading. PO Box 228. Reading RG6 6AJ, UK.

PROF P. SLATER, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JU, Scotland, UK.

DR J. STEELE, Dept of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Highfield. Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.

DR A. WHITEN, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9TS, Scotland, UK

DR G. WILKINSON, Dept of Zoology, 1210 Zoology/Psychology Bdg, University of Maryland. College Park, MD 20742-4415, USA.

REGISTRATION FORM

Please complete and return to: Assistant Editor, The Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London NWI 4RY, UK.

Please send me the following number of tickets for the Symposium SOCIAL LEARNING AMONG MAMMALS:

..... tickets for Friday 29 November 1996

..... tickets for Saturday 30 November l996

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NOTES

Attendance The Symposium is open to any person interested in the subject of the meeting. Seating accommodation in the Meeting Rooms is, however, limited to about 200, and those who wish to attend are therefore asked to apply in advance for tickets. There will be an attendance fee of £25.00 for one day or part day, and £50 for two days or part days, with reduced rates for members of The Zoological Society of London, The Mammal Society or the Primate Society of Great Britain, and for undergraduate or postgraduate students (see application form).

Location The Society's Meeting Rooms are next to its Main Offices. on the north side of the Outer Circle, Regent's Park. Cars may be parked in the nearby London Zoo Visitors' car park. The charge is £10 per day but those attending the Symposium may claim a special rate of £4.00 per day on production of their admission ticket. The nearest public transport is by the 274 bus (to the Zoo), or by the Underground (to Camden Town station).

Meals and refreshments Coffee and tea will be served in the foyer of the Meeting Rooms: the cost is included in the attendance fee. Luncheon is not provided. but participants may make use of the catering facilities within the Zoological Gardens.

Publication The papers given at the Symposium will be edited by Dr Hilary O. Box , Professor Kathleen R. Gibson. and published as No. 73 in the series Symposia of the Zoological Society of London.

Report on the PSGB Winter meeting 1996: Social Learning Among Mammals

The 1996 Winter Meeting of the Primate Society of Great Britain was held in conjunction with the Mammal Society and the Zoological Society of London at the meeting rooms of the ZSL on 29th and 30th November, 1996. The meeting was very well attended, and tickets for both days were sold out in advance. This popularity reflects the extremely varied and interesting programme put together by the organisers, Hilary Box and Kathleen Gibson. The main programme consisted of eighteen presentations from invited speakers on the general theme of social learning in mammals. In addition to these there were two special presentations: the Osman Hill Lecture, given by Thelma Rowell, and the closing lecture, given by Jane Goodall, as the first recipient of the PSGBÕs Conservation Medal.

Taking the programme as a whole, about one third of the papers was on aspects of social learning in primates, and the majority of those concerned great apes or homonids. There were no research papers dealing specifically with social learning in New or Old World monkeys, although presentations by Hilary Box and Barbara King used examples of both to illustrate the points they were making. The evidence for social learning in prosimians was summarised by Simon Bearder. He pointed out that research has tended to concentrate on diurnal primates, which rely heavily on vision for communication and information gathering. This is almost certainly because vision is the sensory modality which is most developed in humans, and therefore the most accessible to researchers. This tendency to concentrate research efforts on the aspects of social behaviour which are most amenable to study, or with which we can identify most easily ourselves, was a theme which recurred at various points throughout the meeting. For example, studies of social learning in bats and cetaceans are relatively rare. This probably owes much to the fact that both groups use acoustic communication which is either out of the range of human hearing, or which makes use of cues which are too subtle for us to distinguish without the aid of sophisticated equipment. On a related theme, Thelma Rowell pointed out that the greater propensity for social complexity and social learning often attributed to the primates may reflect differences in the total research effort, and in the kinds of research questions asked, as much as any real difference between the primates and other taxa.

The Ônon-primateÕ presentations covered a wide range of mammalian taxa. In addition to cetaceans and bats there were papers on, elephants, rodents, bears, felids, canids, and ungulates, both wild and domesticated. A few of the papers reported the results of experimental investigations of social learning processes, notably Kevin LalandÕs study of Norway rats, but the majority consisted of interpretation of observations made in the field, or reviews of published data suggestive of social learning. Striking examples were given of local ÔtraditionsÕ in a variety of taxa and situations. These included songs, fishing methods and ranging patterns in humpback and killer whales, the learning of signature whistles in dolphins, dietary variation in bears and canids, and the learning of predatory behaviour in felids. Most of the studies were in their early stages, however, erecting hypotheses rather than testing them. Together they highlighted a key problem: namely that it is extremely difficult to demonstrate that social learning has taken place in a field situation. The meeting closed with Jane GoodallÕs lecture on cultural transmission among chimpanzees and conservation. The link between social learning and conservation may not be immediately obvious, but there is one. Social transmission of learnt information is one of the mechanisms that enables animals to adapt rapidly to a changing environment. In natural populations of social mammals individuals of one sex usually disperse from the group they are born in and join another. This provides a mechanism by which social transmission can occur between groups. But with increasing fragmentation of habitats, dispersal becomes restricted, and so, therefore, does the transmission of learnt behaviours. How important this will be in terms of conservation is difficult to predict, but it is certain to reduce the capacity to cope with environmental change.

The meeting was a great success, thanks largely to the efforts of the organisers. They assembled a group of speakers with a common interest in social learning, but with very varied research experience. For primatologists, it provided an excellent opportunity to assess the current status of comparative data on social learning in other mammals. At the same time the meeting indicated the need for discussion and concensus among researchers working in this field on the best way to proceed with their studies. This applies particularly to field studies, where standard criteria should be established to distinguish between social transmission and non-social learning, and between local ÔtraditionsÕ and random regional variation.

DAVID A. HILL
School of Biological Sciences
University of Sussex