PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Claude Loverdo
AU  - Hugo Viciana
TI  - Cultural transmission and biological markets
AID  - 10.1101/083907
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 083907
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/27/083907.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/27/083907.full
AB  - Active cultural transmission of fitness-enhancing behavior can be seen as a costly strategy, one whose evolutionary stability poses a Darwinian puzzle. In this article, we offer a biological market model of cultural transmission that substitutes or complements existing kin-selection based theories for the evolution of cultural capacities. We explicitly formulate how a biological market can account for the evolution of deference and prestige-related phenomena, as well as how it can affect the dynamics of cumulative culture. We show that, under certain conditions, teaching evolves even when innovations are not sufficiently opaque and can be acquired by emulators via inadvertent transmission. Furthermore, teaching in a biological market is a precondition for enhanced individual learning abilities.