The fallacy of 'signature whistles' in bottlenose dolphins: a comparative perspective of 'signature information' in animal vocalizations

By Brenda McCowan, D. Reiss. 2001

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Developmental Biology, Ecology, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a0218f37420412db724df481ed017dbcf88cd58a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental Biology

1. Randall S. Wells
2. B. López
3. S. Yin
4. M. C. Baker
5. D. Logue
6. P. Tyack
7. S. Watwood
8. Whitlow W. L. Au

In Ecology

1. B. López
2. Randall S. Wells
3. P. Tyack
4. P. Miller
5. S. Yin
6. M. C. Baker
7. D. Logue
8. S. Watwood

In Oceanography

1. P. Miller
2. B. López
3. S. Yin
4. M. C. Baker
5. D. Logue
6. P. Tyack
7. Randall S. Wells
8. S. Watwood

Citations in the corpus

• DIRECTIONALITY IN THE WHISTLES OF HAWAIIAN SPINNER DOLPHINS (STENELLA LONGIROSTRIS): A SIGNAL FEATURE TO CUE DIRECTION OF MOVEMENT? (2003, background): “…suggest bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), and possibly other species, use individually distinct ‘‘signature’’ whistles to identify one another (Caldwell and Caldwell 1965, Tyack 1986, Caldwell et al. 1990, Sayigh et al. 1990, Tyack 2000, but see McCowan and Reiss 2001 for a divergent view).”
• Whistle sharing in paired male bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus (2004, methodology): “The results of this study disagree with those of McCowan and Reiss (2001).”
• Call-type matching in vocal exchanges of free-ranging resident killer whales, Orcinus orca (2004, background): “…showed that matching vocal interactions do occur among wild bottlenose dolphins (see also Smolker et al. 1993), but whether the exchanged whistles are individually distinctive ‘signature’ whistles or whistles from a shared repertoire (Janik & Slater 1998; McCowan & Reiss 2001) remains unknown.”
• Social Sounds: Vocal Learning and Development of Mammal and Bird Calls (2003, background): “Comparative Vocal Learning 159 The signature hypothesis has been reassessed recently (Caldwell et al. 1990; McCowan and Reiss 1995a, 2001).”
• Population Differentiation in a Complex Bird Sound: A Comparison of Three Bioacoustical Analysis Procedures (2003, methodology): “Processing of acoustic signals by automated digital techniques has increasingly been used to address the problem of the characterization and quantification of the similarity of complex sounds (Nowicki & Nelson 1990; Wright 1996; Janik 1999; McCowan & Reiss 2001; Tchernichovski et al. 2001).”
• Anthropogenic Noise and its Effect on Animal Communication: An Interface Between Comparative Psychology and Conservation Biology (2003, methodology): “Repetitive calls recorded from each individual were then measured separately using the methods described by McCowan (1995), McCowan and Reiss (2001) and McCowan and Hooper (2002).”
• Barking in domestic dogs: context specificity and individual identification (2004, methodology): “…Pan troglodytes:Mitani et al. 1996), marine mammals ( fur seals, Callorhinus ursinus: Insley 2001; bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus: McCowan & Reiss 2001) and birds (domestic chicks, Gallus gallus domesticus: Kent 1987; mallard ducks, Anas platyrhyncos: Gottlieb 1988; barnacle…”
• Whistle characteristics in free-ranging bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the Mediterranean Sea: Influence of behaviour (2011, result): “Thus, the present study supports the idea that upsweeps (whistles with no inflection points and ascendant frequencies) play an important role in the bottlenose dolphin whistle repertoire (Tyack, 1986; Janik et al., 1994; McCowan and Reiss, 2001).”