Dear Marmam Community, On behalf of my co-authors and myself, I wish to draw your attention to our new Note published in Marine Mammal Science.
We document the first occurrence of the rare foraging tactic *shelling *in bottlenose dolphins outside of Shark Bay, Western Australia. Our observations from southeast Queensland provide evidence consistent with the possibility of the independent innovation of this tool-use behaviour*. *We additionally provide the first evidence consistent with vertical transmission of shelling from mother to offspring. Continued study of populations in Shark Bay and Hervey Bay will be essential for disentangling the ecological, cognitive, cultural, and evolutionary drivers of this behavior, as well as clarifying patterns of transmission and behavioral specialization. CITATION: Levengood, A.L., Hume, G.V., Buckman, J.M., Steel, I., Toohey, B.E., Lynch, P., Smith, C. 2026. Observations of shelling behavior and potential evidence of vertical social learning by bottlenose dolphins in the Great Sandy Marine Park, Queensland Australia. *Marine Mammal Science* no. 4: e70252. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.70252. The paper can be freely downloaded here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mms.70252 Please feel free to reach out with any questions. Cheers, Alexis Dr Alexis Levengood Lecturer, University of the Sunshine Coast Queensland, Australia
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