Journal
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
Volume 3, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150372
Keywords
social complexity hypothesis; conformism; individuality; communication; social structure; cetaceans
Categories
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
- Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTs) pooling initiative
- Scottish Funding Council [HR09011]
- NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship (PGS-M)
- NSERC Canadian Graduate Scholarship (CGS-D)
- Izaak Killam Memorial Scholarship
- Patrick F. Lett Fund
- Dalhousie's Presidents Award
- FNU fellowship for the Danish Council for Independent Research from the Ministry of Higher Education and Science
- Natural Environment Research Council [smru10001] Funding Source: researchfish
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The 'social complexity hypothesis' suggests that complex social structure is a driver of diversity in animal communication systems. Sperm whales have a hierarchically structured society in which the largest affiliative structures, the vocal clans, are marked on ocean-basin scales by culturally transmitted dialects of acoustic signals known as 'codas'. We examined variation in coda repertoires among both individual whales and social units-the basic element of sperm whale society-using data from nine Caribbean social units across six years. Codas were assigned to individuals using photo-identification and acoustic size measurement, and we calculated similarity between repertoires using both continuous and categorical methods. We identified 21 coda types. Two of those ('1 + 1 + 3' and '5R(1)') made up 65% of the codas recorded, were shared across all units and have dominated repertoires in this population for at least 30 years. Individuals appear to differ in the way they produce '5R(1)' but not '1 + 1 + 3' coda. Units use distinct 4-click coda types which contribute to making unit repertoires distinctive. Our results support the social complexity hypothesis in a marine species as different patterns of variation between coda types suggest divergent functions, perhaps representing selection for identity signals at several levels of social structure.
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