 We (Bristol and Zürich research groups) are lucky enough to have two papers out in Current Biology this week on bottlenose dolphin social complexity.
In the first paper, led by Bristol MSc student Emma Chereskin, we show that vocal exchanges can function as a replacement of physical bonding in dolphin alliances. This is the first evidence for Robin Dunbar's social bonding hypothesis outside of the primate lineage: Chereskin E, Connor RC, Friedman WR, Jensen FH, Allen SJ, Sørensen PM, Krützen M, King SL (2022). Allied male dolphins use vocal exchanges to ‘bond-at-a-distance’. Current Biology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.019 In the second paper, led by Zürich PhD graduate Livia Gerber, we show that that ‘popular’ allied male dolphins enjoy higher reproductive success: Gerber L, Connor RC, Allen SJ, Horlacher K, King SL, Sherwin WB, Willems E, Wittwer S, Krützen M (2022). Social integration influences fitness in allied male dolphins. Current Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.03.027 A selection of press coverage below: Science: https://www.science.org/content/article/dolphins-whistle-keep-touch-distant-friends?utm_campaign=NewsfromScience&utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Twitter The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/university-of-bristol-shark-bay-bristol-b2043243.html Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10648125/Dolphins-whistle-male-bonding-ritual.html
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Danai Papageorgiou awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship to join the Shark Bay Dolphin Research team...3/22/2022 Huge congratulations to Danai for being awarded a #MSCA postdoctoral fellowship to explore the epigenetic drivers of inter-individual variation in male dolphin synchrony and the associated fitness consequences. This is a big collaboration with our Cetacean CommCog group at the University of Bristol and the Evolutionary Genetics group at the University of Zürich led by Prof. Michael Krützen. We look forward to welcoming Danai to the team in April 2023.
 Stephanie is thrilled to have been awarded a #HFSP Research Grant with Dr Andrea Ravignani (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands), Prof Peter Madsen (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Dr Peter Cook (New College Florida, USA). The project is on the ‘The Social Origins of Rhythm’ and, using data from > 30 marine mammal species, it will integrate approaches from field biology, comparative neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and speech sciences to test competing hypotheses on the evolutionary roots of the social use of vocal rhythm. The team have been awarded $1.44 million USD over three years.
We just returned from our first Shark Bay Dolphin Research retreat in Mürren, Switzerland where PhD students from the University of Bristol, University of Western Australia and the University of Zürich got to present their work and we all planned the 2022 field season. It was a fantastic trip - both in terms of sharing results and team bonding!
Laura's PhD research is exploring the fine-scale acoustic and movement behaviour of bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay, Wales. This month Laura and team and deployed 6 Soundtraps and collected 10 eDNA samples across Cardigan Bay. Our network of acoustic recorders will shed important light on bottlenose dolphin space use in Welsh waters. Big thanks to our collaborators at the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre and the University of Aberystwyth and our funders: NERC GW4 DTP and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.
We are pleased to share our new paper ‘Cooperation-based concept formation in male bottlenose dolphins’ published in Nature Communications.
In this paper, we combine long-term data with sound playback experiments and drone technology to show that male dolphins form social concepts of ‘team membership’, categorizing allies according to a shared cooperative history. Abstract: In Shark Bay, Western Australia, male bottlenose dolphins form a complex nested alliance hierarchy. At the first level, pairs or trios of unrelated males cooperate to herd individual females. Multiple first-order alliances cooperate in teams (second-order alliances) in the pursuit and defence of females, and multiple teams also work together (third-order alliances). Yet it remains unknown how dolphins classify these nested alliance relationships. We use 30 years of behavioural data combined with 40 contemporary sound playback experiments to 14 allied males, recording responses with drone-mounted video and a hydrophone array. We show that males form a first-person social concept of cooperative team membership at the second-order alliance level, independently of first-order alliance history and current relationship strength across all three alliance levels. Such associative concepts develop through experience and likely played an important role in the cooperative behaviour of early humans. These results provide evidence that cooperation-based concepts are not unique to humans, occurring in other animal societies with extensive cooperation between non-kin. Link to paper: https://rdcu.be/cjdS9 Video abstract (with lots of wonderful Shark Bay footage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1DaP7DLDdM We are pleased to share our new publication in Royal Society Open Science titled Evidence that bottlenose dolphins can communicate with vocal signals to solve a cooperative task by StephanieL. King, Emily Guarino, Katy Donegan, Christina McMullen and Kelly Jaakkola.
Abstract: Cooperation experiments have long been used to explore the cognition underlying animals' coordination towards a shared goal. While the ability to understand the need for a partner in a cooperative task has been demonstrated in a number of species, there has been far less focus on cooperation experiments that address the role of communication. In humans, cooperative efforts can be enhanced by physical synchrony, and coordination problems can be solved using spoken language. Indeed, human children adapt to complex coordination problems by communicating with vocal signals. Here, we investigate whether bottlenose dolphins can use vocal signals to coordinate their behaviour in a cooperative button-pressing task. The two dolphin dyads used in this study were significantly more likely to cooperate successfully when they used whistles prior to pressing their buttons, with whistling leading to shorter button press intervals and more successful trials. Whistle timing was important as the dolphins were significantly more likely to succeed if they pushed their buttons together after the last whistle, rather than pushing independently of whistle production. Bottlenose dolphins are well known for cooperating extensively in the wild, and while it remains to be seen how wild dolphins use communication to coordinate cooperation, our results reveal that at least some dolphins are capable of using vocal signals to facilitate the successful execution of coordinated, cooperative actions. The paper is OA and can be found here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.202073  Over six episodes, Chris Packham’s Animal Einsteins looks at how Earth’s savviest species have sharpened their skills to thrive in the animal kingdom. Their cunning tricks and unique techniques are being brought to BBC Two by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, based in Bristol.
In episode 2, Stephanie discussed how dolphins synchronise their calls with the calls of their peers to increase feelings of team bonding – a type of shared experience we used to think was unique to humans. Bottlenose dolphins can form alliances that last decades and they advertise these relationships with synchronised body movements, our research has shown that synchronised calls also play a vital role. You can catch up with the episode here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000stfb  Pernille and Stephanie are working with the team at the Dolphin Research Center on an exciting new project investigating how anthropogenic noise affects cooperation in dolphins using acoustic and movement recording, non-invasive tags! This will be one of many exciting pieces of work from Pernille's PhD research.
Follow Pernille on twitter (@PernilleMS) for project updates.  Early April sees another paper out of our long-term dolphin research off Monkey Mia in the eastern gulf of Shark Bay. This research represents the fruition of an excellent Masters thesis by Bronte Moore. Why is this interesting? Allied male dolphins in Shark Bay use coercive vocalisations called “pops” to herd females. Pops are usually produced in trains by one male, but recent observations suggested multiple males might coordinate pop production...  Using acoustic localisation, we confirmed pops came from different bearings and that it was indeed two animals coordinating their pop trains (male A and male B). Further, males would match each other’s pop tempo and produce their pop trains in unison...  n humans, synchronised actions lead to increased feelings of bonding, foster cooperation and diminish the perceived threat of rivals. Male dolphins are also known for their remarkable motor synchrony...  Our study shows that acoustic coordination and synchrony is also important for allied male dolphins. We suggest that, like in humans, physical AND vocal coordination in dolphins promote cooperation and social bonding.
Full citation: Moore BL, Connor RC, Allen SJ, Krützen M, King SL. 2020 Acoustic coordination by allied male dolphins in a cooperative context. Proc. R. Soc. B 287: 20192944. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2944 Watch this space for forthcoming updates on this remarkable dolphin population… |
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