Socially segregated, sympatric sperm whale clans in the Atlantic Ocean

Shane Gero, Anne Bøttcher, Hal Whitehead, Peter Teglberg Madsen

Résultat de recherche: Articleexamen par les pairs

31 Citations (Scopus)

Résumé

Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) are unusual in that there is good evidence for sympatric populations with distinct culturally determined behaviour, including potential acoustic markers of the population division. In the Pacific, socially segregated, vocal clans with distinct dialects coexist; by contrast, geographical variation in vocal repertoire in the Atlantic has been attributed to drift. We examine networks of acoustic repertoire similarity and social interactions for 11 social units in the Eastern Caribbean. We find the presence of two socially segregated, sympatric vocal clans whose dialects differ significantly both in terms of categorical coda types produced by each clan (Mantel test between clans: matrix correlation=0.256; p ≤ 0.001) and when using classificationfree similarity which ignores defined types (Mantel test between clans: matrix correlation=0.180; p ≤ 0.001). The more common of the two clans makes a characteristic 1+1+3 coda, while the other less often sighted clan makes predominantly regular codas. Units were only observed associating with other units within their vocal clan. This study demonstrates that sympatric vocal clans do exist in the Atlantic, that they define a higher order level of social organization as they do in the Pacific, and suggests that cultural identity at the clan level is probably important in this species worldwide.

Langue d'origineEnglish
Numéro d'article160061
JournalRoyal Society Open Science
Volume3
Numéro de publication6
DOI
Statut de publicationPublished - juin 8 2016

Note bibliographique

Funding Information:
S.G. was supported by an NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship (PGS-M), an NSERC Canadian Graduate Scholarship (CGS-D), the Izaak Killam Memorial Scholarship, the Patrick F. Lett Fund, the Dalhousie’s Presidents Award, the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTs) pooling initiative, the Carlsberg Foundation and an FNU fellowship for the Danish Council for Independent Research from the Ministry of Higher Education and Science supplemented by a Sapere Aude Research Talent Award. P.T.M. contributed funding from an FNU large frame grant. H.W. was funded through operating and equipment grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Authors.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • General

PubMed: MeSH publication types

  • Journal Article

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