November 5, 2024
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These bird nests show signs of an architectural “Culture”.
Culture may play a role in how birds collectively build in the Kalahari Desert
White-billed Weaver Sparrow nests and roosts.
Wolfgang Kaehler/Alamy Stock Photo
From long and winding migration flights complicated songs and intelligent tool use, scientists have learned that many bird behaviors are socially transmitted and persist from generation to generation defined as “culture” of animals. Now a study suggests that culture may also play a role in bird architecture.
The researchers analyzed more than 400 structures built by 43 different groups in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. These birds live communally, and the entire cohort works together to build multiple nests and nests out of grass. The dominant female of the group then lays the eggs in a long, tube-like entrance to the nest. Individual birds sleep close together in U-shaped roosts with entrances and exits.
The scientists found that different collections of birds, even those living within a few meters of each other, built very different tube structures. The biggest difference is “how short or long the structures are,” says lead study author Maria C. Tello-Ramos, a cognitive ecologist at the University of Hull in England. Tube width also varied between groups. Furthermore, each group maintained the same architectural style over time—and when outsiders joined, they adapted to that style.
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To investigate why the nests were built differently, the team looked at factors that can determine nest size and shape for a given bird species: weather conditions, tree height, individual body size and genetic relatedness. (If closely related birds build similar structures, for example, a genetic element could be assumed.) However, none of these factors appeared to play a role in how Kalahari sparrows built their nests, the researchers reported.
in the year science.
“Then we say, ‘OK, what’s left?'” Tello-Ramos explained. He and his colleagues proposed that cultural transmission may be key to nest building. “In our paper, we haven’t come up with experiments yet, but we have very good clues that this might be the case,” he says.
“These are important questions that are understudied,” says Christina Riehl, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. He is not convinced that the research data is sufficient to completely rule out genetic influence. “They can’t look at, say, the effect of genetic differences because they don’t have very good genetic information on all the people in those groups,” he says. “I think there is still a lot to be done, and I think this paper will inspire future research in a very good way.”
