Supplementary material from "Songbird dynamics under the sea: acoustic interactions between humpback whales suggest song mediates male interactions" ...
The function of song has been well studied in numerous taxa and plays a role in mediating both intersexual and intrasexual interactions. Humpback whales are among few mammals who sing, but the role of sexual selection on song in this species is poorly understood. While one predominant hypothesis is...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
The Royal Society
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3985323.v2 https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Songbird_dynamics_under_the_sea_acoustic_interactions_between_humpback_whales_suggest_song_mediates_male_interactions_/3985323/2 |
| Summary: | The function of song has been well studied in numerous taxa and plays a role in mediating both intersexual and intrasexual interactions. Humpback whales are among few mammals who sing, but the role of sexual selection on song in this species is poorly understood. While one predominant hypothesis is that song mediates male–male interactions, the mechanism by which this may occur has never been explored. We applied metrics typically used to assess songbird interactions to examine song sequences and movement patterns of humpback whale singers. We found that males altered their song presentation in the presence of other singers; focal males increased the rate at which they switched between phrase types ( p = 0.005), and tended to increase the overall evenness of their song presentation ( p = 0.06) after a second male began singing. Two-singer dyads overlapped their song sequences significantly more than expected by chance. Spatial analyses revealed that change in distance between singers was related to whether ... |
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