ReviewBehavioral ecology and sociobiology2017
Harnessing learning biases is essential for applying social learning in conservation.
Review in Behavioral ecology and sociobiology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Knowledge transmission, culture and the consequences of social disruption in wild elephants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Interspecific Conformity and Asymmetric Behavioral Convergence inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Lessons in cognition: A review of maze designs and procedures used to measure spatial learning in fish.Journal of fish biology · 2025Review
- The flexibility of social learning and its conservation implications in mammals and beyond.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Conserving avian vocal culture.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Strategies for integrating animal social learning and culture into conservation translocation practice.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Cultural processes and demography: implications for conservation and beyond.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Ecology and conservation of socially learned foraging tactics in odontocetes.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Worlds that collide: conservation applications of behaviour and culture in human-wildlife interactions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- In search of animal normativity: a framework for studying social norms in non-human animals.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2024Article
- Competition and generalization impede cultural formation in wild jackdaws.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Social diffusion of new foraging techniques in the Southern ground-hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri).Learning & behavior · 2023Article
- Social behavior mediates the use of social and personal information in wild jays.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Animal cognition in an urbanised world.Frontiers in ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- The Role of Animal Cognition in Human-Wildlife Interactions.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- Testing social learning of anti-predator responses in juvenile jackdaws: the importance of accounting for levels of agitation.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Complex dynamics of social learning in groups of wild Arabian babblers.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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.
Funding
Abstract
Social learning can influence how animals respond to anthropogenic changes in the environment, determining whether animals survive novel threats and exploit novel resources or produce maladaptive behaviour and contribute to human-wildlife conflict. Predicting where social learning will occur and manipulating its use are, therefore, important in conservation, but doing so is not straightforward. Learning is an inherently biased process that has been shaped by natural selection to prioritize important information and facilitate its efficient uptake. In this regard, social learning is no different from other learning processes because it too is shaped by perceptual filters, attentional biases and learning constraints that can differ between habitats, species, individuals and contexts. The biases that constrain social learning are not understood well enough to accurately predict whether or not social learning will occur in many situations, which limits the effective use of social learning in conservation practice. Nevertheless, we argue that by tapping into the biases that guide the social transmission of information, the conservation applications of social learning could be improved. We explore the conservation areas where social learning is highly relevant and link them to biases in the cues and contexts that shape social information use. The resulting synthesis highlights many promising areas for collaboration between the fields and stresses the importance of systematic reviews of the evidence surrounding social learning practices.
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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.