Zeh Julia M, Perez-Marrufo Valeria, Adcock Dana L, Jensen Frants H, Knapp Kaitlyn J, Robbins Jooke, Tackaberry Jennifer E, Weinrich Mason, Friedlaender Ari S, Wiley David N, Parks Susan E
Department of Biology, Syracuse University,107 College Place, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.
Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, Frederiksborgvej 399, Roskilde, Denmark.
R Soc Open Sci. 2024 Mar 13;11(3):231608. doi: 10.1098/rsos.231608. eCollection 2024 Mar.
Acoustic recording tags provide fine-scale data linking acoustic signalling with individual behaviour; however, when an animal is in a group, it is challenging to tease apart calls of conspecifics and identify which individuals produce each call. This, in turn, prohibits a robust assessment of individual acoustic behaviour including call rates and silent periods, call bout production within and between individuals, and caller location. To overcome this challenge, we simultaneously instrumented small groups of humpback whales on a western North Atlantic feeding ground with sound and movement recording tags. This approach enabled a comparison of the relative amplitude of each call across individuals to infer caller identity for 97% of calls. We recorded variable call rates across individuals (mean = 23 calls/h) and groups (mean = 55 calls/h). Calls were produced throughout dives, and most calls were produced in bouts with short inter-call intervals of 2.2 s. Most calls received a likely response from a conspecific within 100 s. This caller identification (ID) method facilitates studying both individual- and group-level acoustic behaviour, yielding novel results about the nature of sequence production and vocal exchanges in humpback whale social calls. Future studies can expand on these caller ID methods for understanding intra-group communication across taxa.
声学记录标签提供了将声学信号与个体行为联系起来的精细尺度数据；然而，当动物处于群体中时，区分同种个体的叫声并确定每个叫声是由哪些个体发出的具有挑战性。这反过来又阻碍了对个体声学行为的可靠评估，包括叫声频率和静音期、个体内部和个体之间的叫声组产生以及叫声者的位置。为了克服这一挑战，我们在北大西洋西部的一个觅食地，同时给一小群座头鲸安装了声音和运动记录标签。这种方法能够比较个体间每个叫声的相对振幅，从而推断出97%的叫声的发出者身份。我们记录了个体（平均 = 23次叫声/小时）和群体（平均 = 55次叫声/小时）的不同叫声频率。叫声在整个潜水过程中都会发出，并且大多数叫声是以叫声组的形式发出，叫声之间的间隔很短，为2.2秒。大多数叫声在100秒内会收到同种个体的可能回应。这种叫声者识别（ID）方法有助于研究个体和群体层面的声学行为，从而得出关于座头鲸社交叫声中序列产生和声音交流本质的新结果。未来的研究可以扩展这些叫声者ID方法，以理解不同分类群之间的群体内部交流。
