Figure 1.

The bottleneck of social transmission in wild populations. The bottleneck of social transmission is usually thought of in the context of dyadic learning between humans, and is framed by individual constraints such as memory and attention. However, the size of the bottleneck should take into account the summed opportunity for potential transmission, as this affects the overall amount of memory available at the population level. Opportunity can be influenced by environmental constraints such as the distribution of resources, as well as social constraints, such as dominant/subordinate relationships. Behaviours that must pass through a stricter bottleneck should be under pressure to become more learnable, or face behavioural extinction.