ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2010
Is horizontal transmission really a problem for phylogenetic comparative methods? A simulation study using continuous cultural traits.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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18 citing papers in PubMed.
- State formation across cultures and the role of grain, intensive agriculture, taxation and writing.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- African harps as units of cultural evolution: a cladistic analysis on their morphology.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Historical Linguistics of Sign Languages: Progress and Problems.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- The potential to infer the historical pattern of cultural macroevolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Pama-Nyungan grandparent systems change with grandchildren, but not cross-cousin terms or social norms.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- The treeness of the tree of historical trees of life.PloS one · 2020Article
- Symbols in motion: Flexible cultural boundaries and the fast spread of the Neolithic in the western Mediterranean.PloS one · 2018Article
- Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
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- Evolution of cultural traits occurs at similar relative rates in different world regions.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2014Article
- Cultural phylogeography of the Bantu Languages of sub-Saharan Africa.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2013Article
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- Macro-evolutionary studies of cultural diversity: a review of empirical studies of cultural transmission and cultural adaptation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2011Review
- The cultural evolution of democracy: saltational changes in a political regime landscape.PloS one · 2011Article
- Evolutionary approaches to cultural and linguistic diversity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
- Your place or mine? A phylogenetic comparative analysis of marital residence in Indo-European and Austronesian societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
- Simulating trait evolution for cross-cultural comparison.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2010Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) provide a potentially powerful toolkit for testing hypotheses about cultural evolution. Here, we build on previous simulation work to assess the effect horizontal transmission between cultures has on the ability of both phylogenetic and non-phylogenetic methods to make inferences about trait evolution. We found that the mode of horizontal transmission of traits has important consequences for both methods. Where traits were horizontally transmitted separately, PCMs accurately reported when trait evolution was not correlated even at the highest levels of horizontal transmission. By contrast, linear regression analyses often incorrectly concluded that traits were correlated. Where simulated trait evolution was not correlated and traits were horizontally transmitted as a pair, both methods inferred increased levels of positive correlation with increasing horizontal transmission. Where simulated trait evolution was correlated, increasing rates of separate horizontal transmission led to decreasing levels of inferred correlation for both methods, but increasing rates of paired horizontal transmission did not. Furthermore, the PCM was also able to make accurate inferences about the ancestral state of traits. These results suggest that under certain conditions, PCMs can be robust to the effects of horizontal transmission. We discuss ways that future work can investigate the mode and tempo of horizontal transmission of cultural traits.
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