Culturally transmitted song exchange between humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the southeast Atlantic and southwest Indian Ocean basins.

ABSTRACT: In migratory marine species, investigating population connectivity and structure can be challenging given barriers to dispersal are less evident and multiple factors may influence individual movement patterns. Male humpback whales sing a song display that can provide insights into contemporary connectivity patterns, as there can be a cultural exchange of a single, population-wide shared song type with neighbouring populations in acoustic contact. Here, we investigated song exchange between populations located on the east and west coasts of Africa using 5 years of concurrent data (2001-2005). Songs were qualitatively and quantitatively transcribed by measuring acoustic features of all song units and then compared using both Dice's similarity index and the Levenshtein distance similarity ind

SUBMITTER: Rekdahl ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6281946 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature