Delphinid Whistle Repertoires: A comparison method between and within species

本项目将描述和比较几种海豚的口哨声。飞燕会发出三种声音：咔哒声（用于回声定位）、脉冲爆发声（确切功能尚不清楚）和哨声。口哨声是窄带、调频的叫声，可以根据口哨声的基本形状（轮廓）来分类。许多鸟类的发声谱（一个物种发出的声音类型的目录）已经得到了高度的研究和描述。尽管人们知道海豚在交流中广泛使用口哨声，但许多物种都没有全面的口哨声。海豚的哨声曲目由一个物种产生的所有哨声类型组成。然而，哨子类型的声学参数可以在不同的再现之间改变，而哨子类型的轮廓保持不变。现有的研究主要集中在根据哨子轮廓测量的声学参数（变量，例如最大和最小频率）或非常广泛的哨子形状分类（例如上扫，下扫或正弦波）来描述哨子曲目，而不是分析单个哨子类型。通过描述和比较哨子类型和物种哨子库，我们可以更全面地了解海豚的交流，物种之间的差异以及不断变化的海洋环境如何影响海豚的交流系统。我希望通过对飞燕类口哨声的描述，发现某些物种是否比其他物种产生更广泛和多样化的口哨声，这与社会结构的差异有何关系，是否存在物种特有的口哨声类型使用，以及物种是否共享口哨声类型，如果是，由哪个物种共享。我的目标是确定海豚口哨声发生地理差异的规模，以及日益增加的海洋噪音如何影响海豚的通信系统。

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.