Song complexity is maintained during inter-population cultural transmission of humpback whale songs ...
Among animal species, the songs of male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are a rare example of social learning between entire populations. Understanding fine-scale similarity in song patterns and structural features will better clarify how accurately songs are learned during inter-population...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wk1 https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wk1 |
| Summary: | Among animal species, the songs of male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are a rare example of social learning between entire populations. Understanding fine-scale similarity in song patterns and structural features will better clarify how accurately songs are learned during inter-population transmission. Here, six distinct song types (2009–2015) transmitted from the east Australian to New Caledonian populations were quantitatively analysed using fine-scale song features. Results found that New Caledonian whales learned each song type with high accuracy regardless of the pattern’s complexity. However, there were rare instances of themes (stereotyped patterns of sound units) only sung by a single population. These occurred more often in progressively changing ‘evolutionary’ songs compared to rapidly changing ‘revolutionary’ songs. Our results suggest that populations do not need to reduce complexity to accurately learn song patterns. Populations may also incorporate changes and embellishments into ... |
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