Collaborative Research: Opening a Quantitative Window into the Mind and Communication of Dolphins

大脑、高度群居的宽吻海豚的认知和沟通能力是传奇，吸引了科学家和广大公众的兴趣和想象力。值得注意的是，海豚是少数几个学习发声的物种之一；因此，海豚为我们提供了一个独特的、替代鸣禽的模型，以促进我们对大脑哺乳动物发声学习和交流过程的理解，这种哺乳动物表现出高度的社会和行为复杂性。尽管对海豚发声交流的研究已经进行了几十年，但海豚发声交流的构成要素、要素的顺序和时间组织以及发声交易的性质仍然是个谜。为了破译海豚的通讯并进一步阐明这些问题，PI将使用野外和水族馆的观测方法，以及水族馆的两种实验方法。第一种方法研究海豚在面对新奇事物时如何协调它们的行为：当被要求同时呈现新的行为时，海豚如何同步它们的行为？当面对新的挑战时，他们如何成功地作为一个团队工作？在第二种方法中，研究人员将为海豚提供双向互动触摸屏和音频系统。他们的发声学习倾向和其他认知过程将通过给予他们对互动系统的选择和控制，并观察和记录他们如何使用和响应他们的互动的偶发事件来探索，这些互动应该是获得与物体、互动或活动在时间上配对的新颖的声音信号。水族馆研究特别有助于外展工作和非正式的科学教育，因为与海豚有关的活动将在领先水族馆的露天圆形剧场环境中进行。展览已经从海豚表演变成了更多关于动物护理、行为和保护的教育演示。研究活动将与公众参观和学童实地考察同时进行，因此，研究成果将实时向公众传达。几乎所有拟议的活动都可以在巴尔的摩的国家水族馆公开展出，只需花费不多的精力和费用，就可以指导来访的小学生了解研究过程和跨越科学界限的合作研究。对研究地点的实地考察是与本科生和研究生课程一起为亨特学院的学生组织的，是向这些学生展示和参与实际尖端研究的绝佳机会。动物认知心理学家和海洋哺乳动物科学家、物理学家、计算神经学家和生物声学家的实验室之间紧密联系的跨学科合作，旨在将高通量环境扩展到捕获海豚的通信研究。这一建议的一个关键智力优点是通过从统计力学、机器学习和信号处理中提取的强大方法来解决动物认知和通信领域的这些基本问题。“解码”海豚通信的核心技术问题是声音定位和将检测到的发声归因于特定的个体海豚的困难，缺乏自动化的行为分析方法，以及创建可进行高通分析的归因于声音和行为交易或“对话”的综合图像的关键步骤。另一个技术问题是设计和部署一个先进的双向交互系统，该系统包括一个水下触摸板和实时音频输入/输出，以及一套相关的交互界面。最后，该项目还解决了部署用于实地研究的空中和水上无人机的重要技术问题。

The cognitive and communication prowess of the large-brained, highly gregarious bottlenose dolphin is legendary and has captured the interest and imagination of scientists and the public at large. Notably, dolphins are one of a handful of species that are vocal learners; thus the dolphin presents us with a unique and alternative model to songbirds to advance our understanding of the processes that underlie vocal learning and communication in a large-brained mammal showing high social and behavioral complexity. Despite decades of research on dolphin vocal communication, the constituent elements, the sequential and temporal organization of the elements, and the nature of vocal transactions between dolphins remain enigmatic. In order to decipher dolphin communication and further elucidate these issues, the PIs will use observational approaches in the wild and in an aquarium as well as two experimental approaches in an aquarium. A first approach studies how dolphins coordinate their behavior in the face of novelty: How do dolphins synchronize their behavior when requested to present novel behaviors in tandem? How do they succeed in working as a team when confronted with a new challenge? In a second approach, the researchers will provide dolphins with a two-way, interactive touchscreen and audio system. Their proclivity for vocal learning and their other cognitive processes will be probed by giving them choice and control over the interactive system and observing and documenting how they use and respond to the contingencies of their interactions, which shall be obtaining novel acoustic signals temporally paired with objects, interactions or activities. The aquarium studies are particularly conducive to outreach efforts and informal science education since the dolphin-related activities will be conducted in an open amphitheater environment at a leading aquarium. The exhibit has changed from dolphin shows to more educational demonstrations about animal care, behavior, and conservation. The research activities will take place concurrently with visits of the public and field trips of school children and therefore, the research endeavor will be communicated to the public in real time. Virtually all the activities proposed can, with modest effort and cost, be made into an open exhibit at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, instructing visiting schoolchildren on the research process and on collaborative research across scientific boundaries. The field trips to the research sites are organized jointly with undergraduate and graduate courses in field research for Hunter College students and are excellent opportunities to showcase and engage actual cutting edge research to these students. This tightly-knit interdisciplinary collaboration between the labs of animal cognitive psychologist and marine mammal scientist and physicist, computational neuroscientist and bio-acoustician, seeks to and extend high-throughput settings to dolphin communication studies in captivity.A key intellectual merit of this proposal is to address these fundamental questions in the field of animal cognition and communication through powerful methods drawn from statistical mechanics, machine learning, and signal processing. Central technical problems in "decoding" dolphin communication are the difficulty in sound localization and attributing the detected vocalizations to specific individual dolphins, the lack of automated behavioral analysis methods, and the crucial step of creating an integrated picture of attributed vocal and behavioral transactions or "conversations" that can be subjected to high-through analysis. Another technical problem is the design and deployment of an advanced two-way interactive system consisting of an underwater touchpad and real-time audio input/output, plus the associated set of interaction interfaces. Finally, this project also addresses important technical problems in the deployment of aerial and aquatic drones for field studies.