[evo.theory] Fwd: [Philsoc-l] Today's Philsoc

[Rachael Brown]

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> Philsoc Seminar: Tuesday 20th of September, 4pm, Seminar Room B.
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> Speaker: Rachael Brown (ANU).
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> Title: Fighting Toads with Toads - Extending the Evolutionary Reach of Learning.
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> Abstract: Learning has long been thought to be evolutionarily unimportant. Traditionally learning being seen as a capacity limited to only relatively complex animals such as humans. Learning has also been believed to be too fragile as a route of behavioural inheritance to allow for the type of cumulative selection required for the evolution of complex behavioural adaptations. Recently this view has been challenged on a number of fronts. Firstly, learning capacities have been observed in many species right across the animal kingdom, including relatively "primitive" species such as the fruit fly. Secondly, evidence demonstrating that quite rudimentary learning can enable the inheritance of long standing "traditions" within animal groups has come to light. Thirdly, there is good reason to believe that learning can influence and enable the evolution of complex morphological adaptations. Despite these challenges to the traditional view, the evolutionary importance of learning is still unclear - largely due to a disagreement surrounding the nature of behaviour as a route of inheritance. As a consequence of this learning is often ignored by mainstream practitioners in behavioural ecology and animal behaviour. In this paper, I defend none of the standing challenges to the status quo mentioned above. Rather, I present a novel challenge to the traditional view role of learning in evolution using a case study from invasive species biology - the impact of cane toads upon the native species of Northern Australia. I argue that even if learning is a fragile route of inheritance, it can, and does, have long standing evolutionary consequences. Because the novel challenge to the role of learning in evolution I present here does not rely on the stability of behavioural inheritance, it should be more palatable to the mainstream evolutionary biologist.
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