Giant singers from neighboring oceans share song parts over time

January 9, 2019, Wildlife Conservation Society

Singing humpback whales from different ocean basins seem to be picking up musical ideas from afar, and incorporating these new phrases and themes into the latest song, according to a newly published study in Royal Society Open Science that's helping scientists better understand how whales learn and change their musical compositions.

The new research shows that two humpback whale populations in different ocean basins (the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans) in the Southern Hemisphere sing similar song types, but the amount of similarity differs across years. This suggests that males from these two populations come into contact at some point in the year to hear and learn songs from each other.

The study titled "Culturally transmitted song exchange between humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the southeast Atlantic and southwest Indian Ocean basins" appears in the latest edition of the Royal Society Open Science journal. The authors are: Melinda L. Rekdahl, Carissa D. King, Tim Collins, and Howard Rosenbaum of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society); Ellen C. Garland of the University of St. Andrews; Gabriella A. Carvajal of WCS and Stony Brook University; and Yvette Razafindrakoto of COSAP and Madagascar National Parks.

"Song sharing between populations tends to happen more in the Northern Hemisphere where there are fewer physical barriers to movement of individuals between populations on the breeding grounds, where they do the majority of their singing. In some populations in the Southern Hemisphere song sharing appears to be more complex, with little song similarity within years but entire songs can spread to neighboring populations leading to song similarity across years," said Dr. Melinda Rekdahl, marine conservation scientist for WCS's Ocean Giants Program and lead author of the study. "Our study shows that this is not always the case in Southern Hemisphere populations, with similarities between both ocean basin songs occurring within years to different degrees over a 5-year period."

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Bowhead whales: jazz artists of the deep whose calls rival birdsong

Bowheads serenade each other off Greenland with a vast repertoire of improvised jazz-like song, study says

Agence France-Presse

Wed 4 Apr 2018 07.38 BSTFirst published on Wed 4 Apr 2018 02.50 BST

How do bowhead whales in the unbroken darkness of the Arctic’s polar winter keep busy during breeding season?

They sing, of course.

From late autumn to early spring, off the east coast of Greenland, some 200 bowheads, hunted to the edge of extinction, serenade each other with compositions from a vast repertoire of song, according to a study published on Wednesday.

“It was astonishing,” said the lead author, Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle, who eavesdropped on these subaquatic concerts.

“Bowhead whales were singing loudly, from November until April” – non-stop, 24/7 – “and they were singing many, many different songs.”

Stafford and three colleagues counted 184 distinct melodies over a three-year period, which may make bowheads one of the most prolific composers in the animal kingdom.

“The diversity and inter-annual variability in songs of bowhead whales in this study are rivalled only by a few species of songbirds,” the study found.

Unlike mating calls, songs are complex musical phrases that are not genetically hard-wired but must be learned.

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What singing fruit flies can tell us about quick decisions

Date:

March 20, 2014

Source:

Princeton University

Summary:

The pitch and tempo of the male fruit fly's mating song is based on environmental cues rather than a stereotyped pattern, researchers have discovered. These findings could be substantial for understanding rapid decision-making in more advanced beings such as humans.

Continued

Humpback whale singing affected by seismic surveys

Posted by: Leya Musa / 3 days ago

A study of singing humpback whales off the coast of Northern Angola has shown that singing during the breeding season is reduced in the presence of noise from seismic surveying. This reduced singing can have a negative impact on the breeding displays of the whales.

The study was carried out between March and December 2008. Using passive monitoring equipment the researchers took sound samples for the first 10 minutes of every hour. During July and also October the survey also recorded the sounds of seismic surveying activity. During these periods the numbers of singing humpback whales decreased substantially.

With the African coast becoming an attractive region for oil and gas companies the researchers say that more information is needed to determine the impact that the developments are having on the whales that live and breed along the coast. As the whale populations are still recovering from the days of the whaling industry there may be a need for greater conservation activities and management of seismic surveying.

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Singing Humpback Whales Tracked On Northwest Atlantic Feeding Ground

Apr. 29, 2013 — Male humpback whales sing complex songs in tropical waters during the winter breeding season, but they also sing at higher latitudes at other times of the year. NOAA researchers have provided the first detailed description linking humpback whale movements to acoustic behavior on a feeding ground in the Northwest Atlantic.

Findings from the study, published April 10 in the journal PLOS ONE, demonstrate the potential applications of passive acoustic tracking and monitoring for marine mammal conservation and management. 

Co-author Sofie Van Parijs, who heads the passive acoustics group at the Woods Hole Laboratory of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), says this study is not so much about biology, but about acoustic methods. 

"We have monitored and acoustically recorded whale sounds for years, and are now able to 'mine' these data using new computer software applications and methods, " said Van Parijs. "Passive acoustic tracking has enabled us to localize humpback whale song to study the movements of individual whales, and to relate the singing to specific behaviors. This has never before been accomplished for singing humpbacks on a northwest Atlantic feeding ground." 

"Passive acoustic tracking of humpback whales and other cetacean species provides an opportunity to collect data on movement patterns that are difficult―or impossible―to obtain using other techniques," said lead author Joy Stanistreet, who worked with Van Parjis and co-author Denise Risch at the NEFSC's Woods Hole Laboratory at the time of the study. Stanistreet is currently a graduate student at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, N.C. 

Since 2007, NEFSC researchers have used year-round passive acoustic monitoring to study ocean noise in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a feeding ground for humpback whales and other marine mammal species in the southern Gulf of Maine. Humpback whales typically frequent the sanctuary between April and December and feed on sand lance and other small schooling fish. Humpback whale singing in the sanctuary usually occurs from April through May, following the spring migration from southern waters, and from August to December before the return fall migration. During the summer, humpbacks remain in the sanctuary but generally do not sing while they feed.

More: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130429133658.htm

Multi-Tasking Whales Sing While Feeding, Not Just Breeding

Dec. 19, 2012 — Humpback whales are famed for their songs, most often heard in breeding season when males are competing to mate with females. In recent years, however, reports of whale songs occurring outside traditional breeding grounds have become more common. A new study may help explain why.

Humpbacks sing for their supper -- or at least, they sing while they hunt for it.

The research, published December 19 in PLoS ONE, uncovers the whales' little-understood acoustic behavior while foraging.

It also reveals a previously unknown behavioral flexibility on their part that allows the endangered marine mammals to balance their need to feed continuously with the competing need to exhibit mating behaviors such as song displays.

"They need to feed. They need to breed. So essentially, they multi-task," said study co-author Ari S. Friedlaender, research scientist at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. "This suggests the widely held behavioral dichotomy of breeding-versus-feeding for this species is too simplistic."

Researchers from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, the University of California-Santa Barbara and Duke tracked 10 humpback whales in coastal waters along the Western Antarctic Peninsula in May and June 2010. The peninsula's bays and fjords are important late-season feeding grounds where humpbacks feast on krill each austral autumn before migrating to warm-water calving grounds thousands of miles away.

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219174156.htm

Elusive Bowhead whales revealed by undersea microphones

Critically endangered whales sing like birds; new recordings hint at rebound

August 2012. When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months.

Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW's Applied Physics Lab, set out to find if any endangered bowhead whales passed through the Fram Strait, an inhospitable, ice-covered stretch of sea between Greenland and the northern islands of Norway. Only around 40 sightings of bowhead whales, which were hunted almost to extinction, have been reported there since the 1970s.

Stafford and colleagues put two hydrophones, or underwater microphones, on moorings attached to the seafloor in Fram Strait, leaving them there for as long as the batteries would last: nearly a year. Since the population of bowhead whales likely to pass through was thought to number in the tens, they didn't anticipate much interesting data.

Gobsmacked by results
"We hoped to record a few little grunts and moans," Stafford said. "We were not expecting to get five months of straight singing."

Not only did they record singing nearly every hour of the day and night, they picked up more than 60 unique songs.

The variety of tunes was so surprising that the researchers compared the whales' song catalog to that of birds.

"Whether individual singers display one, multiple or even all call types, the size of the song repertoire for... bowheads in 2008-2009 is remarkable and more closely approaches that of songbirds than other... whales," they wrote in the report.

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/bowhead-singing.html

Critically Endangered Whales Sing Like Birds; New Recordings Hint at Rebound

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2012) — When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months.

Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW's Applied Physics Lab, set out to find if any endangered bowhead whales passed through the Fram Strait, an inhospitable, ice-covered stretch of sea between Greenland and the northern islands of Norway. Only around 40 sightings of bowhead whales, which were hunted almost to extinction, have been reported there since the 1970s.

Stafford and colleagues put two hydrophones, or underwater microphones, on moorings attached to the seafloor in Fram Strait, leaving them there for as long as the batteries would last: nearly a year. Since the population of bowhead whales likely to pass through was thought to number in the tens, they didn't anticipate much interesting data.


Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120731123248.htm

Nightingales quarrel at eye level

Male nightingales that sing to defend their territory quarrel more at eye level, say scientists.

During night-time singing bouts, males are known to interrupt each other's calls and rapidly change their songs.

Researchers wanted to investigate whether the birds tried to gain a height advantage by moving higher up in their chosen trees.

They found that the birds were actually more aggressive when singing from branches that were at the same height.

The findings, published in journal PLoS One, surprised the researchers.

"We expected nightingales singing from higher song posts to appear more threatening to their rivals," said Dr Valentin Amrhein from the University of Basel, who was the senior author of the study.

Alongside their colleagues from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, the scientists theorised that the birds' positions could have a significant effect on how "threatening" their calls were.

Dr Amrhein explained that higher branches were thought only to be accessible to the fittest and most dominant birds, because taking up a loftier post increased threat of predators and reduced protection from the elements.

The team believed, therefore, that males singing from higher positions would represent more of a threat to their rivals, and elicit more of a defensive response from other males.

Read on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17403241

Experienced Male Nightingales ‘Show Off’ To Protect Territories

Male song birds sing to attract mates and to deter other males from their territory and it is well known that the solo repertoire of many male song bird species increases with age and experience. However, new research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Frontiers in Zoology has examined the songs sung by male nightingales in response to recordings which mimicked an invading male and suggests that older males are less threatened by intruders resulting in less song matching.

Researchers from Freie Universität Berlin observed the behavior of male nightingales in Treptower Park in response to playback of prior recordings of nightingale songs. Males in their first breeding season are recognizable by pale tips to their secondary feathers and tertials, and individual nightingales could be tracked by color coded leg rings. Five of the one-year olds returned for a second year and were again tested with playback of recorded nightingale songs.

The length of the song (three seconds) and, if the male chose to sing before the recorded ‘intruder’ finished its song, the amount of overlap (approximately two seconds after the recording started) did not differ between the two age groups. Nor did these values alter for the birds followed over two seasons. However, there was a difference in song matching. Song matching (repeating the song that was just played) is thought to signal aggressive intent or at least provide a warning that the interloper is encroaching on established territory. While most of the one year olds tended to match songs with the recorded intruder, older birds matched songs less often, and birds in their second year overlapped songs more frequently than in the previous year. Additionally, one year old nightingales used a third less individual songs than two-year olds (127 compared to 179).

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