Cultural revolutions reduce complexity in the songs of humpback whales.

ABSTRACT: Much evidence for non-human culture comes from vocally learned displays, such as the vocal dialects and song displays of birds and cetaceans. While many oscine birds use song complexity to assess male fitness, the role of complexity in humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) song is uncertain owing to population-wide conformity to one song pattern. Although songs change gradually each year, the eastern Australian population also completely replaces their song every few years in cultural 'revolutions'. Revolutions involve learning large amounts of novel material introduced from the Western Australian population. We examined two measures of song structure, complexity and entropy, in the eastern Australian population over 13 consecutive years. These measures aimed to identify the role of comp

SUBMITTER: Allen JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6253384 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature