Population Ecology of Tunes

John M. McBride; Armand. M. Leroi

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arXiv · 2609.09501

Population Ecology of Tunes

John M. McBride·Armand. M. Leroi

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Abstract

How cultural repertoires maintain diversity under selection is a fundamental question in cultural evolution. We address this using thirteen years of weekly popularity data for approximately 20,000 Irish traditional tunes, fitting ecological birth-process models under neutral, frequency-dependent, and per-tune selection hypotheses. We find strong evidence that tunes differ in intrinsic fitness - some are systematically more likely to be learned than others. We find that 29% of the variance in fitness can be explained by a mixture of social and melodic features. Some tunes appear to be carried along via linkage due to the tradition of playing tunes in sets, analogous to selective sweeps in genetics. By measuring changes in fitness over time and comparing this with recordings we precisely identify the mechanism by which a long-dormant tune can become fit through a popular recording. Despite the directional selection, repertoire diversity increases, driven by the continual arrival of new compositions. These results demonstrate that selection and diversity can coexist in a cultural ecosystem, and establish Irish traditional music as a quantitatively tractable system for studying the evolution of cultural variants and understanding what makes a tune stand out.

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John M. McBride, Armand. M. Leroi. 2026-09-08. Population Ecology of Tunes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09501

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