| Summary: | Almost all mammals communicate using sound, but few species produce complex songs. Two baleen whales sing complex songs that change annually, though only the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) has received much research attention. This study focuses on the other baleen whale singer, the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus). Members of the Spitsbergen bowhead whale population produced 184 different song types over a 3-year period, based on duty-cycled recordings from a site in Fram Strait in the NE Atlantic. Distinct song types were recorded over short periods, lasting at most some months. This song diversity could be the result of a possibly increasing population, or immigration of animals from other populations that are no longer isolated from each other by heavy sea ice. However, this explanation does not account for the within season and annual shifting of song types. Other possible explanations, is that the extraordinary diversity in songs is the result of weak selection pressure for interspecific identification or for maintain song characteristics or, alternatively, strong pressure for novelty in a small population. Exemplars of unique bowhead whales songs recorded in Fram Strait 2010-11, 2012-13, 2013-14Bowhead whales produce multiple unique songs annually. This dataset provides exemplars of each of 184 unique songs recorded over three winters in Fram Strait. In 2010-2011, 38 songs were identified; in 2012-13, 69 songs were identified and in 2013-14, 76 songs were identified. The zip file contains one exemplar of each song type as an mp3 file. The dates and times these were recorded is in the README.txt fileSongs-RSBL-2018-0056.zip
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