title: Dynamic horizontal cultural transmission of humpback whale song at the ocean basin scale.
abstract: Cultural transmission, the social learning of information or behaviors from conspecifics, is believed to occur in a number of groups of animals, including primates, cetaceans, and birds. Cultural traits can be passed vertically (from parents to offspring), obliquely (from the previous generation via a nonparent model to younger individuals), or horizontally (between unrelated individuals from similar age classes or within generations). Male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) have a highly stereotyped, repetitive, and progressively evolving vocal sexual display or "song" that functions in sexual selection (through mate attraction and/or male social sorting). All males within a population conform to the current version of the display (song type), and similarities may exist among the songs of populations within an ocean basin. Here we present a striking pattern of horizontal transmission: multiple song types spread rapidly and repeatedly in a unidirectional manner, like cultural ripples, eastward through the populations in the western and central South Pacific over an 11-year period. This is the first documentation of a repeated, dynamic cultural change occurring across multiple populations at such a large geographic scale.
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Lab, School of Veterinary Science, Gatton, QLD 4343, Australia. e.garland@uq.edu.au
authors.forename: Ellen C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Garland
authors.forename: Anne W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Goldizen
authors.forename: Melinda L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Rekdahl
authors.forename: Rochelle
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Constantine
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Garrigue
authors.forename: Nan Daeschler
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Hauser
authors.forename: M Michael
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Poole
authors.forename: Jooke
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Robbins
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Noad
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D050640:Humpback Whale / Q000502:physiology*; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D010140:Pacific Ocean; D012919:Social Behavior; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013997:Time Factors; D014828:Vocalization, Animal