The effect of cultural transmission on continuous variation

Abstract

Cultural transmission may depend on the non-genetic transfer of information from parent to offspring. The consequences of such cultural transmission for continuous variation are investigated theoretically for randomly mating populations. Cultural inheritance may act on genetical and environmental differences between individuals. The consequences for cultural inheritance of polygenic variation and variation due to chance environmental factors are considered. An equilibrium may occur in which the population variance and the covariances between relatives can be expressed as functions of estimable parameters of genetical and environmental variation. Whatever the ultimate origin of culturally inherited differences they are expected to lead to environmental differences between families (“E₂” variation). In addition, if cultural transmission maintains differences due ultimately to segregation at many gene loci we may find genotype-environmental covariation is generated.