Baleen Whale Acoustic Ethology

Abstract

There has been enormous growth in technical mechanisms for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing baleen whale acoustic behaviors. Organizing and synthesizing the import of these behaviors remain a challenge, as is the placement of such efforts within the broader framework of adaptationAdaptation, selective advantageSelective advantage, and behavioral and evolutionary ecologyEvolutionary ecology. Synthesis based on bioacoustic behaviorBioacoustic behavior includes consideration of low-frequency, physical acoustic propagationAcoustic propagation in the marine environmentPhysical environment and the resultant potential beneficial opportunities for baleen whales to communicateCommunicate, forageForage, navigateNavigate, orient, and maintain social organization. Observations of baleen whale bioacoustic behaviorsBioacoustic behavior range from singing as a male reproductive advertisement display occurring over periods of many months within a potentially enormous communicationCommunication space to non-singing events associated with short duration social contexts involving both sexes and multiple age groups. Such observations are helpful as a starting framework but should be recognized as simplifications given the high levels of behavioral variabilityBehavioral variability and complexity inherent in these long-lived, large-brained species. A variety of observations, referred to as discrepant eventsDiscrepant event, suggest that present understandings of baleen whale behavioral ecologyBehavioral ecology are insufficient to explain the spatial and temporal scales over which baleen whales engage in bioacoustic behaviorsBioacoustic behavior. Such behaviors and behavioral variabilityBehavioral variability at ocean basin scales have promoted the concepts of acoustic environmentAcoustic environment and acoustic habitatAcoustic habitat, and motivated concerns over the biological influences of anthropogenic sounds on species-specific habitats, behaviors, and survival.

Topics & Concepts