Socially segregated, sympatric sperm whale clans in the Atlantic Ocean

Royal Society Open Science

Volumn 3, Issue 6, 2016, Pages

  Gero, Shane ^a   Bøttcher, Anne ^a   Whitehead, Hal ^b   Madsen, Peter Teglberg ^a  

^a AARHUS UNIVERSITY   (Denmark)

^b DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Clan; Communication; Culture; Dialect; Geographical variation; Social structure

Indexed keywords

EID: 84973458270     PISSN: None     EISSN: 20545703     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160061     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Nettle D, Dunbar RJM. 1997 Social markers and the evolution of reciprocal exchange. Curr. Anthropol. 38, 93–99. (doi:10.1086/204588)
2. Nettle D. 1999 Language variation and the evolution of societies. In The evolution of culture (eds RIM Dunbar, C Knight, C Power), pp. 214–227. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
3. Van den Berghe PL. 1981 The ethnic phenomenon. New York, NY: Elsevier.
4. Barth F. 1969 Introduction. In Ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organization of cultural difference (ed. F Barth), pp. 9–38. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.
5. Boyd R, Richerson PJ. 1987 The evolution of ethnic markers. Cult. Anthropol. 2, 65–79. (doi:10.1525/can. 1987.2.1.02a00070)
6. McElreath R, Boyd R, Richerson PJ. 2003 Shared norms and the evolution of ethnic markers. Curr. Anthropol. 44, 122–129. (doi:10.1086/345689)
7. Conner DA. 1982 Dialects vs. geographic variation in mammalian vocalizations. Anim. Behav. 30, 297–298. (doi:10.1016/S0003-3472(82)80269-8)
8. Kershenbaum A, Ilany A, Blaustein L, Geffen E. 2012 Syntactic structure and geographical dialects in the songs of male rock hyraxes. Proc. R. Soc. B 279, 2974–2981. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.0322)
9. Wilkinson GS. 2003 Social and vocal complexity in bats. In Animal social complexity: intelligence, culture, and individualized societies (eds FBM De Waal, P Tyack), pp. 322–341. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10. Maeda T, Masataka N. 1987 Locale-specific vocal behaviour of the tamarin (Saguinus I. labiatus). Ethology 75, 25–30. (doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.1987. tb00639.x)
11. Wich SA et al. 2012 Call cultures in orangutans? PLoS ONE 7, e36180. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036180)
12. Thomas JA, Stirling I. 1983 Geographic variation in the underwater vocalizations ofWeddell seals (Leptonychotes weddelli) from Palmer Peninsula and McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Can. J. Zool. 61, 2203–2212. (doi:10.1139/z83-291)
13. Payne RS, Guinee LN. 1983 Humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae, songs as indicators of ‘stocks’. In Communication and behaviour of whales (ed. RS Payne), pp. 333–358. Boulder, CO:Westview Press.
14. Podos J, Warren PS. 2007 The evolution of geographic variation in birdsong. Adv. Study Behav. 37, 403–458. (doi:10.1016/S0065-3454(07) 37009-5)
15. Krützen M, Willems EP, van Schaik CP. 2011 Culture and geographic variation in orangutan behavior. Curr. Biol. 21, 1808–1812. (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011. 09.017)
16. Fayet AL, Tobias JA, Hintzen RE, Seddon N. 2014 Immigration and dispersal are key determinants of cultural diversity in a songbird population. Behav. Ecol. 25, 744–753. (doi:10.1093/beheco/ aru047)
17. Riesch R, Barrett-Lennard LG, Ellis GM, Ford JKB, Deecke VB. 2012 Cultural traditions and the evolution of reproductive isolation: ecological speciation in killer whales? Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 106, 1–17. (doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2012.01872.x)
18. Nunn CL, Thrall PH, Bartz K, Dasgupta T, Boesch C. 2009 Do transmission mechanisms or social systems drive cultural dynamics in socially structured populations? Anim. Behav. 77, 1515–1524. (doi:doi:10.1016/j.anebehav.2009.02.023)
19. Cantor M, Shoemaker LG, Cabral RB, Flores CO, Varga M, Whitehead H. 2015 Multilevel animal societies can emerge from cultural transmission. Nat. Commun. 6, 8091. (doi:10.1038/ncomms9091)
20. Janik VM, Slater PJB. 1997 Vocal learning in mammals. Adv. Study Behav. 26, 59–99. (doi:10.1016/S0065-3454(08)60377-0)
21. Janik V, Slater P. 2000 The different roles of social learning in vocal communication. Anim. Behav. 60, 1–11. (doi:10.1006/anbe.2000.1410)
22. Janik VM. 2014 Cetacean vocal learning and communication. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 28C, 60–65. (doi:10.1016/j.conb.2014.06.010)
23. Rendell L, Whitehead H. 2003 Vocal clans in sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 270, 225–231. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2002.2239)
24. Gero S, Whitehead H, Rendell L. 2016 Individual, unit and vocal clan level identity cues in sperm whale codas. R. Soc. open sci. 3, 150372. (doi:10.1098/rsos.150372)
25. Watkins WA, Schevill WE. 1977 Sperm whale codas. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 62, 1486–1490. (doi:10.1121/1.381678)
26. Rendell L, Mesnick SL, Dalebout ML, Burtenshaw J, Whitehead H. 2012 Can genetic differences explain vocal dialect variation in sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus? Behav. Genet. 42, 332–343. (doi:10.1007/s10519-011-9513-y)
27. Boyd R, Richerson PJ. 1985 Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago, IL: Macmillan Publishers Limited.
28. McPherson M, Smith-Lovin L, Cook JM. 2001 Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annu. Rev. Sociol. 27, 415–444. (doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415)
29. Antunes R. 2009 Variation in sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) coda vocalization and social structure in the North Atlantic Ocean. PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
30. Whitehead H, Rendell L. 2004 Movements, habitat use and feeding success of cultural clans of South Pacific sperm whales. J. Anim. Ecol. 73, 190–196. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2004. 00798.x)
31. Gero S et al. 2014 Behavior and social structure of the sperm whales of Dominica, West Indies. Mar. Mamm. Sci. 30, 905–922. (doi:10.1111/mms. 12086)
32. Gero S, Gordon JCD, Whitehead H. 2015 Individualized social preferences and long-term social fidelity between social units of sperm whales. Anim. Behav. 102, 15–23. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav. 2015.01.008)
33. Gero S, Gordon JCD, Whitehead H. 2013 Calves as social hubs: dynamics of the social network within sperm whale units. Proc. R. Soc. B 280, 20131113. (doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.1113)
34. Gero S, Engelhaupt D, Whitehead H. 2008 Heterogeneous social associations within a sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus, unit reflect pairwise relatedness. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 63, 143–151. (doi:10.1007/s00265-008-0645-x)
35. Gero S, Gordon JCD, Carlson C, Evans P, Whitehead H. 2007 Population estimate and inter-island movement of sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus, in the Eastern Caribbean. J. Cetacean Res. Manag. 9, 143–150.
36. Gero S, Engelhaupt D, Rendell L, Whitehead H. 2009 Who cares? Between-group variation in alloparental caregiving in sperm whales. Behav. Ecol. 20, 838–843. (doi:10.1093/beheco/ arp068)
37. Gero S, Whitehead H. 2007 Suckling behavior in sperm whale calves: observation and hypotheses. Mar. Mamm. Sci. 23, 398–413. (doi:10.1111/j.1748- 7692.2007.00113.x)
38. Antunes R, Schulz T, Gero S, Whitehead H, Gordon JCD, Rendell L. 2011 Individually distinctive acoustic features in sperm whale codas. Anim. Behav. 81, 723–730. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.12.019)
39. Schulz TM, Whitehead H, Gero S, Rendell L. 2011 Individual vocal production in a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) social unit. Mar. Mamm. Sci. 27, 149–166. (doi:10.1111/j.1748-7692. 2010.00399.x)
40. Schulz TM, Whitehead H, Gero S, Rendell L. 2008 Overlapping andmatching of codas in vocal interactions between sperm whales: insights into communication function. Anim. Behav. 76, 1977–1988. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.07.032)
41. Rendell L, Whitehead H. 2003 Comparing repertoires of sperm whale codas: a multiple methods approach. Bioacoustics 14, 61–81. (doi:10.1080/09524622.2003.9753513)
42. Ankerst M, Breunig MM, Kriegel H-P, Sander J. 1999 OPTICS: ordering points to identify the clustering structure. ACM SIGMOD Rec. 28, 49–60. (doi:10.1145/304181.304187)
43. Achtert E, Kriegel H-P, Schubert E, Zimek A. 2013 Interactive datamining with 3D-parallelcoordinate- trees. In Proc. 2013 ACMSIGMOD Int. Conf. Manag. Data, New York, NY, 22–27 June, pp. 1009–1012. New York, NY: ACM. (doi:10.1145/2463676.2463696)
44. Weilgart L, Whitehead H. 1997 Group-specific dialects and geographical variation in coda repertoire in South Pacific sperm whales. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 40, 277–285. (doi:10.1007/ s002650050343)
45. Mantel N. 1967 The detection of disease clustering and generalized regression approach. Cancer Res. 27, 209–220.
46. Schnell GD, Watt DJ, Douglas ME. 1985 Statistical comparison of proximity matrices: applications in animal behaviour. Anim. Behav. 33, 239–253. (doi:10.1016/S0003-3472(85)80138-X)
47. Whitehead H. 2009 SOCPROG programs: analysing animal social structures. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 63, 765–778. (doi:10.1007/s00265-008- 0697-y)
48. Bridge PD. 1993 Classification. In Biological data analysis (ed. JC Fry), pp. 219–242. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
49. Cairns SJ, Schwager SJ. 1987 A comparison of association indices. Anim. Behav. 35, 1454–1469. (doi:10.1016/S0003-3472(87)80018-0)
50. Engelhaupt D et al. 2009 Female philopatry in coastal basins and male dispersion across the North Atlantic in a highly mobile marine species, the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Mol. Ecol. 18, 4193–4205. (doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009. 04355.x)
51. Torres AMA. 2006 Distincion de clanes de cachalote (Physeter macrocephalus) en el Golfo de California, mediante comparacion de repertorios de codas. Master’s thesis, CICIMAR, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico.
52. Whitehead H, Coakes AK, Jaquet N, Lusseau S. 2008 Movements of sperm whales in the tropical Pacific. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 361, 291–300. (doi:10.3354/ meps07412)
53. Whitehead H, Antunes R, Gero S, Wong SNP, Engelhaupt D, Rendell L. 2012 Multilevel societies of female sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the Atlantic and Pacific:Why are they so different? Int. J. Primatol. 33, 1142–1164. (doi:10.1007/s10764- 012-9598-z)
54. Kirschel ANG, Blumstein DT, Smith TB. 2009 Character displacement of song and morphology in African tinkerbirds. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 8256–8261. (doi:10.1073/pnas.0810 124106)
55. Whitehead H, Gero S. 2015 Conflicting rates of increase in the sperm whale population of the eastern Caribbean: positive observed rates do not reflect a healthy population. Endanger. Species Res. 27, 207–218. (doi:10.3354/esr00657)
56. Delibes M, Gaona P, Ferreras P. 2001 Effects of an attractive sink leading into maladaptive habitat selection. Am. Nat. 158, 277–285. (doi:10.1086/ 321319)
57. Battin J. 2004 When good animals love bad habitats: ecological traps and the conservation of animal populations. Conserv. Biol. 18, 1482–1491. (doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2004.00417.x)
58. Catchpole CK, Slater PBJ. 2013 Bird song: biological themes and variations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
59. Efferson C, Lalive R, Fehr E. 2008 The coevolution of cultural groups and ingroup favoritism. Science 321, 1844–1849. (doi:10.1126/science.1155805)
60. Marcoux M, Whitehead H, Rendell L. 2007 Sperm whale feeding variation by location, year, social group and clan: evidence from stable isotopes. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 333, 309–314. (doi:10.3354/meps333309)
61. Marcoux M, Rendell L, Whitehead H. 2007 Indications of fitness differences among vocal clans of sperm whales. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 61, 1093–1098. (doi:10.1007/s00265-006-0342-6)
62. Cantor M, Whitehead H. 2015 How does social behavior differ among sperm whale clans? Mar. Mamm. Sci. 31, 1275–1290. (doi:10.1111/mms.12218)
63. Tønnessen JN, Johnsen AO. 1982 The history of modern whaling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.