Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) social calls in southern British Columbia

dc.contributor.authorMolder, Zoe
dc.contributor.authorHalliday, William
dc.contributor.authorReidy, Rhonda
dc.contributor.authorKraemer, Chloe
dc.contributor.authorJuanes, Francis
dc.date.accessioned2024-05-17T22:25:44Z
dc.date.available2024-05-17T22:25:44Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractHumpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) nonsong vocalizations, or social calls, are much more poorly understood than humpback song. We examined humpback whale social calls from a foraging ground in southern British Columbia (BC) and developed a catalog for humpback social calls in BC. We tagged four humpback whales on the eastern edge of Swiftsure Bank, BC, in early September 2020, with a passive acoustic and movement tag. We manually classified 32 call types in our data set based on comparisons with published classifications of humpback social calls. Many of the calls identified in our data set had similar characteristics to calls from other locations. We also used two statistical classification methods, a cluster analysis and a random forest. The cluster analysis grouped 20 of these call types into four categories, and the random forest classifier was able to accurately classify all 20 call types 87.6% of the time. This study fills a geographical gap of humpback whale social calls on foraging grounds and is a first step towards categorizing the social calls of humpback whales in BC.
dc.description.reviewstatusReviewed
dc.description.scholarlevelFaculty
dc.description.sponsorshipFunding was provided by grants from the NSERC Discovery program and the Liber Ero Foundation (to F.J.) and through a MITACS Accelerate fellowship in partnership with the Pacific Whale Watch Association and Shaw Centre for the Salish Sea, and the Eugene Maughan Scholarship from the Western Division of the American Fisheries Society (to R.R.).
dc.identifier.citationMolder, Z. A., Halliday, W. D., Reidy, R., Kraemer, C. N., & Juanes, F. (2024). Humpback whale (megaptera novaeangliae) social calls in southern British Columbia. Marine Mammal Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.13138
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1111/mms.13138
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/16527
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherMarine Mammal Science
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectbioacoustics
dc.subjectbiologging
dc.subjectpassive acoustic monitoring
dc.subjectsocial call characteristics
dc.subjectsocial call repertoire
dc.subjectvocalizations
dc.titleHumpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) social calls in southern British Columbia
dc.typeArticle

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