Delphinid Whistle Repertoires: A comparison method between and within species

本计画将描述及比较几种海豚科动物的哨声。海豚科动物发出三种声音：滴答声（用于回声定位）、脉冲声（确切功能未知）和哨声。哨声是窄带的，调频的声音，可以根据哨声的基本形状（轮廓）进行分类。在许多鸟类中，人们已经对发声剧目（一个物种发出的声音类型的目录）进行了深入的研究和描述。尽管我们知道海豚科动物广泛地使用它们的哨声进行交流，但许多物种都没有全面的哨声。一个海豚科的哨声库是由一个物种产生的所有哨声类型组成的。然而，哨子类型的声学参数可以在呈现之间改变，而哨子类型的轮廓保持不变。现有的研究集中在描述哨子剧目的声学参数（变量，如最大和最小频率）测量哨子轮廓或非常广泛的分类哨子形状（如上扫，下扫或正弦曲线），而不是分析个别哨子类型。通过描述和比较哨声类型和物种哨声剧目，我们可以获得一个更完整的图片海豚沟通，这是如何在物种之间变化，以及如何变化的海洋环境可能会影响海豚沟通系统。通过描述的海豚科物种的哨声剧目，我希望发现是否有些物种产生更广泛和更多样化的哨声剧目比其他人，以及如何这可能与社会结构的差异，是否有物种特定的哨声类型的使用，以及如果物种共享哨声类型，如果是这样，由哪些物种。我的目标是确定规模的海豚哨声剧目发生的地理差异，以及如何增加海洋噪音影响海豚通信系统。

This project will describe and compare the whistle repertoires of several delphinid species. Delphinids produce three types of sounds: clicks (used for echolocation), burst pulses (exact function is unknown) and whistles. Whistles are narrow-band, frequency-modulated calls and can be grouped into types by the basic shape (contour) of the whistle. Vocal repertoires (catalogues of the sound types a species produces) have been highly studied and described in many bird species. Despite the knowledge that delphinids use their whistles extensively in communication, comprehensive whistle repertoires are unavailable for many species. A delphinid whistle repertoire is made up of all the whistle types a species produces. However, the acoustic parameters of a whistle type can change between renditions while the contour of the whistle type remains the same. Existing research has focused on describing whistle repertoires in terms of acoustic parameters (variables, e.g. maximum and minimum frequencies) measured from whistle contours or very broad categorisation of whistle shapes (e.g. upsweep, downsweep or sinusoid) rather than analysis of individual whistle types. By describing and comparing whistle types and species whistle repertoires, we can obtain a more complete picture of delphinid communication, how this varies between species and how a changing ocean environment could affect delphinid communication systems. Through the description of whistle repertoires of delphinid species, I hope to discover whether some species produce more extensive and diverse whistle repertoire than others and how this can be related to differences in social structure, whether there is species-specific whistles-type use, as well as if species share whistle types and if so, by which species. I aim to identify the scale at which geographic differences in delphinid whistle repertoires occur and how increasing ocean noise impacts delphinid communication systems.