Quantifying group specificity of animal vocalizations without specific sender information

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Heike Vester - , Ocean Sounds (Author)
  • Kurt Hammerschmidt - , German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (Author)
  • Marc Timme - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Author)
  • Sarah Hallerberg - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Author)

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.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number022138
JournalPhysical Review E
Volume93
Issue number2
Publication statusPublished - 25 Feb 2016
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

PubMed 26986319
ORCID /0000-0002-5956-3137/work/142242458