Berlin 2015 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 17: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics
SOE 17.2: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 2015, 09:45–10:00, MA 001
Sequences of pilot whale calls — •Florencia Noriega1, Heike Vester1, Kurt Hammerschmidt2, Sarah Hallerberg1, and Marc Timme1 — 1Network Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS), 37077 Göttingen — 2Deutsches Primatenzentrum, 37077 Göttingen
Vocal communication is highly evolved in social marine mammals such as killer whales, pilot whales or other dolphins. Their vocal repertoires consist of a variety of sounds ranging from noisy (like clicks and buzzes) to tonal signals (like calls and whistles). There is evidence that at least two or three sounds are sometimes used by killer whales in systematic combination and that they communicate by exchanging vocal signals. However, the way these vocal signals are combined and used by the animals is largely unknown. In this study we investigate the bigram structure observed in sequences of pilot whale calls recorded from six different groups of animals. We are specially interested in whether combinations of calls such as bigrams occur more often than expected when the calls are assumed to be independent. Apart from group specific results, we encounter common properties in the usage of calls across groups. Particularly, we find a tendency to produce sequences of repeated calls and similar distributions of time intervals between consecutive calls.