Kevin Laland Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution; School of Biology; University of St. Andrews Title Animal Social Learning: Problems and Solutions Abstract In recent years, prominent animal behaviour researchers have noted an ‘explosion of interest’ in animal social learning, the process whereby animals acquire skills and knowledge by observing or interacting with other animals. Interest in the topic has also been fuelled by high-profile (Nature, Science, PNAS) reports of inter- and intra-population variation in the behavioural repertoires of animal populations, spawning claims of “culture” in apes, monkeys and cetaceans. Such reports are buttressed by many reports of the spread of novel behaviour in natural animal populations, where previously unseen behaviour rapidly increases in frequency in a population. However, claims that such variation represents animal cultures remain controversial in the absence of clear methods for ruling out what are seen to be alternative explanations, such as genetic differences between populations, or asocial learning in response to varying environmental conditions. Similarly, field researchers have generally been unable to substantiate the intuitive hypothesis that the spread of novel behaviour patterns are underpinned by social (as opposed to exclusively asocial) learning. After outlining these problems, I describe some new methods that potentially allow researchers to (1) identify and quantify social learning among animals living in groups, (2) explain and predict the rate, path and pattern of diffusion of learned innovations, and (3) quantify the extent to which variance in the inheritance of acquired behavioural traits is attributable to social learning, as opposed to other sources. The methods are illustrated with experimental and theoretical analyses of primate, birds, rats and fish behaviour. CV Kevin Laland is a Professor of Biology at the University of St. Andrews. After gaining a Ph.D. on animal social learning at University College London, he was awarded a Human Frontier Science Program fellowship to carry out postdoctoral research on theoretical population genetics at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent 9 years at Cambridge University, as a BBSRC postdoctoral fellow and then a Royal Society University Research Fellow, where he pursued his interests in animal social learning, niche construction and evolutionary theories of human behaviour. He has written or edited 6 books and published more than 100 articles in scientific journals. He is the principle investigator on five major current research council grants, with a combined value of over £1m, and is co-investigator on others worth £3.5m. Selected recent publications Laland, K.N. & Hoppitt, W. 2003. Do animals have culture? Evolutionary Anthropology 12: 150-159. Laland, K.N. & Janik, V. 2006. The animal cultures debate. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21: 542-547. pdf Institution address Kevin Laland Professor of Biology Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution School of Biology, University of St. Andrews Bute Medical Building Queen's Terrace St. Andrews Fife, Scotland KY16 9TS Tel: 01334 463568/463529 fax. 01334 463600 knl1@st-andrews.ac.uk http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~seal http://www.nicheconstruction.com http://culture.st-and.ac.uk/solace