DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Playback Experiments to Examine Contextual Usage of Shared Whistles by Allied Male Bottlenose Dolphins, Tursiops Truncatus

论文研究：通过回放实验来检验雄性宽吻海豚（Tursiops Truncatus）共享口哨的语境用法

• 批准号: 0104982
• 负责人: Peter Tyack
• 金额: $ 1万
• 依托单位: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-06-01 至 2002-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0104982&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DISSERTATION; RESEARCH; Playback; Experiments; Examine

PLAYBACK EXPERIMENTS TO DEMONSTRATE CONTEXTUAL USAGE OF SHARED WHISTLES BY ALLIED MALE BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS, TURSIOPS TRUNCATUS. Peter L. Tyack and Stephanie L. WatwoodBiology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Woods Hole MA 02543.Dolphins and whales (known to biologists as the cetaceans) constitute one of the few mammal groups that demonstrate highly developed vocal learning abilities. Dolphins not only learn to produce an individually distinctive signature whistle as infants, but adults retain the ability to imitate sounds. There has been growing interest in the role of vocal matching during the formation of social bonds in birds and humans, and dolphins provide an opportunity for studying this issue in a mammal that independently evolved abilities of vocal learning (Tyack 2000). Call imitation is used in bird species primarily between individuals with close social relationships or between territorial competitors. Most evidence suggests dolphins match calls either to initiate an interaction with another individual, or as a "badge" of group membership. When dolphins are interacting, they may imitate the individually distinctive whistle of an animal with whom they share a strong bond. Smolker and Pepper (1999) described whistle convergence in socially interacting male dolphins which formed a close-knit alliance, suggesting that whistle sharing is important for individuals with close relationships. This study proposes to examine the use of convergent or imitated whistles by allied male bottlenose dolphins in naturally occurring reproductive contexts or other social contexts. Playback experiments will test whether allied male bottlenose dolphins use shared whistles to attract potentially receptive females or to guard females from competitor non-alliance males. It has been difficult to study the individual vocal responses of free-ranging animals until recently. This study uses a small, towed linear array that can determine the direction from which sounds are produced in the water column, allowing for the identification of individual signalers (Tyack and Miller 1998). The research will be carried out in Sarasota Bay, Florida, where a community of individually identifiable dolphins has been studied for 30 years. Playback stimuli will be generated from high-quality recordings from a variety of age-sex classes recorded during temporary capture-release events during the last 15 years. Analyses of these recordings for alliance males demonstrated a high degree of similarity between the whistles of alliance partners. This proposal makes use of recent developments in acoustic localization to obtain identified whistles from free-ranging, socially interacting bottlenose dolphins. The combination of focal behavioral sampling, acoustic localization, and playback experiments presents a new way to understand the role of imitation in social communication. Playback experiments have been invaluable in deciphering the use of specific vocalizations in birds and primates. The proposed research presents an opportunity to examine acoustic social behavior in cetaceans on a much finer scale than previously attempted with free-ranging animals. The results from this study will be much more comparable to similar studies in terrestrial species.

雄性瓶鼻海豚（Tursiops TRUNCATUS）共享哨声语境使用的回放实验。Peter L.作者声明：Stephanie L.伍兹霍尔海洋研究所生物系。 伍兹霍尔MA 02543.海豚和鲸鱼（生物学家称为鲸目动物）是少数几个表现出高度发达的声音学习能力的哺乳动物群体之一。 海豚不仅在婴儿时期就学会了发出独特的口哨声，而且成年海豚也保留了模仿声音的能力。在鸟类和人类社会关系的形成过程中，人们对声音匹配的作用越来越感兴趣，海豚提供了一个在独立进化出声音学习能力的哺乳动物中研究这个问题的机会（Tyack 2000）。 在鸟类中，模仿叫声主要用于具有密切社会关系的个体之间或领土竞争者之间。大多数证据表明，海豚匹配呼叫要么开始与另一个人的互动，或作为一个“徽章”的群体成员。当海豚互动时，它们可能会模仿与它们有强烈联系的动物的独特哨声。 Smolker和Pepper（1999）描述了在社会互动的雄性海豚中形成紧密联盟的哨声收敛，这表明哨声共享对于具有密切关系的个体很重要。 本研究拟探讨在自然发生的生殖环境或其他社会背景下，使用收敛或模仿哨声的同源雄性海豚。回放实验将测试是否盟军雄性海豚使用共享的哨声，以吸引潜在的接受女性或保护女性从竞争对手非联盟男性。 直到最近，研究自由放养动物的个体声音反应一直很困难。 这项研究使用了一个小型的拖曳线阵，可以确定在水柱中产生声音的方向，从而识别单个信号（Tyack和米勒，1998年）。 这项研究将在佛罗里达的萨拉索塔湾进行，在那里，一个可识别个体的海豚群落已经被研究了30年。 回放刺激将从过去15年中临时捕获-释放事件期间记录的各种年龄-性别类别的高质量录音中产生。 对这些联盟男性录音的分析表明，联盟伙伴的哨声之间具有高度的相似性。该建议利用声学定位的最新发展，从自由活动的、社会互动的海豚中获得识别的哨声。 焦点行为采样，声学定位和回放实验的结合为理解模仿在社会交往中的作用提供了一种新的方法。 回放实验在解释鸟类和灵长类动物特定发声的使用方面是非常宝贵的。 拟议中的研究提供了一个机会，可以在比以前尝试的自由放养动物更精细的尺度上研究鲸类动物的声音社会行为。 这项研究的结果将与陆地物种的类似研究更具可比性。