Non-chimp Animal Culture

Non-chimp Animal Culture By Bob Grant ARTICLE EXTRAS 1 that sponging is a socially learned behavior and likely not the result of genetic inheritance. "We were the first to consider extensive genetic data to actually exclude genetic explanations for the behavior," says Krützen. He and his team took tissue samples from 185 dolphins in Shark Bay, thirteen of which were known adult spongers. Only one of these spongers was male. The researchers genotyped each individual for 12 bi-par

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By Bob Grant

ARTICLE EXTRAS

1 that sponging is a socially learned behavior and likely not the result of genetic inheritance.

"We were the first to consider extensive genetic data to actually exclude genetic explanations for the behavior," says Krützen. He and his team took tissue samples from 185 dolphins in Shark Bay, thirteen of which were known adult spongers. Only one of these spongers was male. The researchers genotyped each individual for 12 bi-parentally inherited microsatellite loci and sequenced a maternally inherited control region of mitochondrial DNA for each dolphin.

They found, by considering the mtDNA profiles, that the spongers shared a recent common female ancestor, making them closely related and all part of the same matriline. The researchers considered ten different scenarios, including sex or mitochondrial chromosome linkage, in which the behavior is mediated by a single gene or several closely linked genes; they discounted all of them ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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