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A theoretical model of coevolution of culture and gene and the effects of mating and learning biases on cultural evolution

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dc.contributor.advisor DEY, SUTIRTH en_US
dc.contributor.author VENKATANARAYANAN, NAVEN NARAYANAN en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2018-05-07T10:26:53Z
dc.date.available 2018-05-07T10:26:53Z
dc.date.issued 2018-04 en_US
dc.identifier.uri http://dr.iiserpune.ac.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/920
dc.description.abstract Gene-culture coevolutionary theory examines the effects of cultural traits, in addition to passing on of genetic traits from one generation to the next differentially. I construct a theoretical model that studies, in addition to the contribution of the phenotype of the organism, its interaction with the extended phenotype while determining the fitness of an individual in the population. I study both negative and positive interactions between the organismal phenotype and the extended phenotype. Positive interaction is when the extended phenotype enhances the fecundity of the individual, whereas negative interaction is when the extended phenotype adversely affects the fecundity of the individual. In both cases, the fitness increases as the population evolves with time. Interestingly, however, this increase is faster in the case of negative interaction than in positive interaction. In the second part of my thesis, I extend my model to study the evolution of cultural learning in a sexual system of reproduction. I combine frequency- dependent learning biases namely, conformation bias and novelty bias, and assortative mating (in addition to the usual case of random mating) to examine the evolutionary dynamics of cultural traits. Since the biases modelled are frequency-dependent, I also investigate the cyclical fluctuations in cultural trait values for the two mating systems. My results agree with several results present in literature and also add a few insights to the existing knowledge of cultural evolution. en_US
dc.description.sponsorship IISER Pune; DST en_US
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.subject 2018
dc.subject Gene-culture co-evolution en_US
dc.subject Cultural transmission en_US
dc.subject Biology en_US
dc.title A theoretical model of coevolution of culture and gene and the effects of mating and learning biases on cultural evolution en_US
dc.type Thesis en_US
dc.type.degree BS-MS en_US
dc.contributor.department Dept. of Biology en_US
dc.contributor.registration 20131094 en_US


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  • MS THESES [1705]
    Thesis submitted to IISER Pune in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the BS-MS Dual Degree Programme/MSc. Programme/MS-Exit Programme

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