TY - JOUR T1 - Cultural transmission and biological markets JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/083907 SP - 083907 AU - Claude Loverdo AU - Hugo Viciana Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/27/083907.abstract N2 - 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. ER -