ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Infectious disease, behavioural flexibility and the evolution of culture in primates.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Inhibitory Systems in Brain Evolution: Pathways of Vulnerability in Neurodevelopmental Disorders.Brain, behavior and evolution · 2025Review
- Impact of joint interactions with humans and social interactions with conspecifics on the risk of zooanthroponotic outbreaks among wildlife populations.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Bidirectional interactions between host social behaviour and parasites arise through ecological and evolutionary processes.Parasitology · 2021Article
- Pathogens, odors, and disgust in rodents.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2020Review
- Skin hydrophobicity as an adaptation for self-cleaning in geckos.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Social behavior and disease: supporting science during the pandemic.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2020Article
- Ecological associations among epidermal microstructure and scale characteristics of Australian geckos (Squamata: Carphodactylidae and Diplodactylidae).Journal of anatomy · 2019Article
- The role of social cognition in parasite and pathogen avoidance.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Effective Network Size Predicted From Simulations of Pathogen Outbreaks Through Social Networks Provides a Novel Measure of Structure-Standardized Group Size.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2018Article
- Coevolution of cultural intelligence, extended life history, sociality, and brain size in primates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Animal and human innovation: novel problems and novel solutions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
- The coevolution of innovation and technical intelligence in primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
- Animal social learning: associations and adaptations.F1000Research · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Culturally transmitted traits are observed in a wide array of animal species, yet we understand little about the costs of the behavioural patterns that underlie culture, such as innovation and social learning. We propose that infectious diseases are a significant cost associated with cultural transmission. We investigated two hypotheses that may explain such a connection: that social learning and exploratory behaviours (specifically, innovation and extractive foraging) either compensate for existing infection or increase exposure to infectious agents. We used Bayesian comparative methods, controlling for sampling effort, body mass, group size, geographical range size, terrestriality, latitude and phylogenetic uncertainty. Across 127 primate species, we found a positive association between pathogen richness and rates of innovation, extractive foraging and social learning. This relationship was driven by two independent phenomena: socially contagious diseases were positively associated with rates of social learning, and environmentally transmitted diseases were positively associated with rates of exploration. Because higher pathogen burdens can contribute to morbidity and mortality, we propose that parasitism is a significant cost associated with the behavioural patterns that underpin culture, and that increased pathogen exposure is likely to have played an important role in the evolution of culture in both non-human primates and humans.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.