title: Genetic and 'cultural' similarity in wild chimpanzees.
abstract: The question of whether animals possess 'cultures' or 'traditions' continues to generate widespread theoretical and empirical interest. Studies of wild chimpanzees have featured prominently in this discussion, as the dominant approach used to identify culture in wild animals was first applied to them. This procedure, the 'method of exclusion,' begins by documenting behavioural differences between groups and then infers the existence of culture by eliminating ecological explanations for their occurrence. The validity of this approach has been questioned because genetic differences between groups have not explicitly been ruled out as a factor contributing to between-group differences in behaviour. Here we investigate this issue directly by analysing genetic and behavioural data from nine groups of wild chimpanzees. We find that the overall levels of genetic and behavioural dissimilarity between groups are highly and statistically significantly correlated. Additional analyses show that only a very small number of behaviours vary between genetically similar groups, and that there is no obvious pattern as to which classes of behaviours (e.g. tool-use versus communicative) have a distribution that matches patterns of between-group genetic dissimilarity. These results indicate that genetic dissimilarity cannot be eliminated as playing a major role in generating group differences in chimpanzee behaviour.
authors: Primatology Department, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig 04103, Germany. langergr@eva.mpg.de
authors: Kevin E
authors: KE
authors: Langergraber
authors: Christophe
authors: C
authors: Boesch
authors: Eiji
authors: E
authors: Inoue
authors: Miho
authors: M
authors: Inoue-Murayama
authors: John C
authors: JC
authors: Mitani
authors: Toshisada
authors: T
authors: Nishida
authors: Anne
authors: A
authors: Pusey
authors: Vernon
authors: V
authors: Reynolds
authors: Grit
authors: G
authors: Schubert
authors: Richard W
authors: RW
authors: Wrangham
authors: Emily
authors: E
authors: Wroblewski
authors: Linda
authors: L
authors: Vigilant
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D003468:Cultural Evolution; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D014644:Genetic Variation; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial