Call playback artificially generates a temporary cultural style of high affiliation in marmosets

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2014.04.027 0003-3472/ 2014 The Authors. Published on behalf license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) Cultural variation can be conceptualized in two main ways: as culture-specific qualitative differences in behavioural form, and also as quantitative variation in performance of constellations of universal behaviours (cultural style). Despite observation of both types inwild nonhumanprimates, diffusion of qualitative culture has been scrutinized extensivelyexperimentallywhilewithin-species transmission of cultural style has remained entirely unexplored. Herewe investigatedwhether a cultural style of high affiliation could be artificially generated in a nonhuman primate (Callithrix jacchus), by daily playback of conspecific affiliative calls simulating nearby amicable individuals. We found that vocalization playback influenced monkeys to spendmore time in affiliative behaviours outside playback hours, relative to silent playback. The effect was specific to affiliation, with no impact on other categories of affect. This change did not persist into the final phase of observation after all playbacks were complete. Findings are consistent with a temporary shift in cultural style effected through vocalization playback, supporting existence of this conception of culture in wild primates and indicating auditory social contagion as a potential diffusion mechanism. The method presented herewill allow researchers to test hypotheses concerning cultural transmission of cultural style, and the underlying processes, across a range of contexts and species. 2014 The Authors. Published on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).