title: Quantifying group specificity of animal vocalizations without specific sender information.
abstract: Recordings of animal vocalization can lack information about sender and context. This is often the case in studies on marine mammals or in the increasing number of automated bioacoustics monitorings. Here, we develop a framework to estimate group specificity without specific sender information. We introduce and apply a bag-of-calls-and-coefficients approach (BOCCA) to study ensembles of cepstral coefficients calculated from vocalization signals recorded from a given animal group. Comparing distributions of such ensembles of coefficients by computing relative entropies reveals group specific differences. Applying the BOCCA to ensembles of calls recorded from group of long-finned pilot whales in northern Norway, we find that differences of vocalizations within social groups of pilot whales (Globicephala melas) are significantly lower than intergroup differences.
authors.affiliation: Ocean Sounds, Sauoya 01, 8312 Henningsvaer, Norway.
authors.forename: Heike
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Vester
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Ethology Lab, German Primate Center, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hammerschmidt
authors.affiliation: Network Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Timme
authors.affiliation: Network Dynamics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hallerberg
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019277:Entropy; D014828:Vocalization, Animal; D050686:Whales, Pilot