Dear colleagues, My co-authors and I are pleased to announce the publication of the article entitled "Context of breaching and tail slapping in Indo‑Pacific humpback dolphins in the northern South China Sea" in the journal "Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology". The link to the article and abstract can be found below and interested people are invited to send me an email to request PDF copies.
Abstract Odontocetes display a wide range of surface behaviors, including aerial and percussive behaviors. However, only a handful of studies have quantitatively investigated the context and function of surface behavioral events in odontocetes. Here, the display of breaching, side breaching, and tail-slapping by Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) was observed during surveys conducted in three locations of the northern South China Sea. The analysis of 380 encounters revealed that, while breaching was not associated with particular contexts, side breaching was mostly displayed during foraging, probably to gather prey during feeding events, and could therefore be further used to indicate foraging activity. Tail-slapping was displayed significantly more during spring than in other seasons, during socializing and traveling than during other activities, and in larger than in smaller groups. This behavior was mostly displayed by old individuals in a variety of contexts, indicating a potential range of functions including attracting attention, communicating information, expressing an emotional state, or gathering prey together. Unexpectedly, tail slaps were significantly less frequent when the research boat actively followed dolphins, showing that the link between this behavior and human disturbances is not clear. More research is needed to investigate details regarding the display of tail slaps in order to be able to reliably use it as a cue to monitor during surveys that indicates that dolphins are being impacted due to disturbance from boats. Furthermore, differences in the display of surface behavioral events were observed among locations, which may be attributed to differences in foraging and/or communication strategies among different populations. The results obtained here will be useful for behavioral monitoring during feld surveys. https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s00265-023-03337-3?sharing_token=gv87aDuD5lMRi9CAXEikgfe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY40mzefvXp6k-vXawRuD2lvw35NPaMKcWxlCqaVOLhoNhegz_hg9veDzX8v6K9_Znq6UXjx4jwJ4NjjLhVf9SGAFk8FjGPtAN6BLXHTCEAWN4N3LyCavzs1XG7JgvilPzg= All te best Agathe Serres, Ph.D. Postdoctoral researcher Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering, Sanya, China agathe.serre...@gmail.com *aga...@idsse.ac.cn <aga...@idsse.ac.cn>*
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