Abstract
EVER since the original enunciation by Baldwin1 in 1896 of the theory of ‘organic selection’, the suggestion that local differences of habit (local ‘traditions’ as Elton2 has termed them) may be the starting point for the evolution of new species of animals has been from time to time put forward in various forms. Such habit ‘traditions’, if entirely of a phenotypic nature, can of course only exist in animals in which there is some ability and opportunity for perpetuation of a particular type of behaviour or attachment to a particular environment or locality by means of associative conditioning, imprinting, or some other type of learning. Many peculiarities of behaviour which appear to be of this kind are known to naturalists; particularly to those who study such subjects as host selection of phytophagous and parasitic insects or the local variation in behaviour of birds (for example, song, nest-site, feeding habits, etc.). Many examples will be found in recent publications (refs. 3–8). That they may be very constant and persistent is suggested by the fact that, in a number of cases, highly characteristic and constant behaviour patterns of birds (such as song type), usually regarded as typical examples of specific characters, are now known to be, in part at least, transmitted from generation to generation by learning.
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References
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Elton, C., "Animal Ecology and Evolution" (1930).
Thorpe, W. H., "Ecology and the Future of Systematics" in "The New Systematics", ed. J. S. Huxley (1940).
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Huxley, J. S., "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis" (1943).
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Cushing, J. E., Jr., Condor, 46, 265 (1944).
Mather, K., Biol. Rev., 18, 32 (1943).
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THORPE, W. Animal Learning and Evolution. Nature 156, 46 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156046a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156046a0
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