Studying dolphin whistles in Mexico

Abstract

Dolphin whistles are emitted especially during social interactions and feeding activities involving group cohesion, individual recognition, and recruitment. Here, at the Faculty of Sciences of UNAM we are studying dolphin whistles, mainly those of wild and captive bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, to learn about their social structure and how whistles may be used to study dolphin ecology. We have developed a new methodology to describe and compare the whistle repertoire, which consists of whistle contour extraction to classify whistles into whistle types (using Matlab BELUGA and ArtWARP), then classifying whistle types into four general categories (high complexity, low complexity, linear long, and linear short), and finally computing a complexity index and a proportional variability of the whistle repertoire. Results obtained showed that this very simple method is useful to describe the whistle repertoire and to compare it according to the general behavioral state of dolphins, and between species. It is necessary to implement new methodologies like this one to better understand how dolphins are using whistles, since acoustic communication is the most important sense in dolphin species. [Work supported by PAPIIT-UNAM.]