Knörnschild Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2018

Culture as an evolutionary force: Does song learning accelerate speciation in a bat ring species?

Culture is highly relevant for human evolution but whether animal culture can be an evolutionary force that promotes speciation is an open and highly contested issue. While culturally induced song divergence can be correlated with increased speciation rates in songbirds, it is hard to resolve whether cultural differences are promoting speciation or vice versa. Studying ring species is a perfect solution for this problem since they illustrate divergence in space instead of time, thus allowing us to determine whether cultural differences are causes or consequences of speciation. A ring species originates from a population that expands around an uninhabitable barrier and gradually diverges…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.