Anthropogenic noise impairs cooperation in bottlenose dolphins

Pernille Sorensen; Abigail Haddock; Emily Guarino; Kelly Jaakkola; Christina McMullen; Frants Jensen; Peter Tyack; Stephanie L King

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.063

Anthropogenic noise impairs cooperation in bottlenose dolphins

Pernille Sorensen^*, Abigail Haddock, Emily Guarino, Kelly Jaakkola, Christina McMullen, Frants Jensen, Peter Tyack, Stephanie L King^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

Highlights

•Anthropogenic noise impairs behavioral coordination in a cooperative context

•Dolphins modified their vocal signals to facilitate cooperative success

•Acoustic compensatory mechanisms are insufficient for overcoming noise impacts

•Critical to account for noise impacts on collective tasks in wild animals

Summary

Understanding the impact of human disturbance on wildlife populations is of societal importance, with anthropogenic noise known to impact a range of taxa, including mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates. While animals are known to use acoustic and other behavioural mechanisms to compensate for increasing noise at the individual level, our understanding of how noise impacts social animals working together remains limited. Here, we investigated the effect of noise on coordination between two bottlenose dolphins performing a cooperative task. We previously demonstrated that the dolphin dyad can use whistles to coordinate their behaviour, working together with extreme precision . By equipping each dolphin with a sound-and-movement recording tag (DTAG-3) and exposing them to increasing levels of anthropogenic noise, we show that both dolphins nearly doubled their whistle durations and increased whistle amplitude in response to increasing noise. While these acoustic compensatory mechanisms are the same as those frequently used by wild cetaceans, they were insufficient to overcome the effect of noise on behavioural coordination. Indeed, cooperative task success decreased in the presence of noise, dropping from 85% during ambient noise control trials to 62.5% during the highest noise exposure. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate in any non-human species that noise impairs communication between conspecifics performing a cooperative task. Cooperation facilitates vital functions across many taxa and our findings highlight the need to account for the impact of disturbance on functionally important group tasks in wild animal populations.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	749-754.e4
Number of pages	6
Journal	Current Biology
Volume	33
Issue number	4
Early online date	12 Jan 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.063
Publication status	Published - 27 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Peter Teglberg Madsen for valuable advice regarding the experimental setup and Kristian Beedholm for his help with creating the noise stimuli. We wish to thank Jesse Fox and Mandy Rodriguez for apparatus creation and troubleshooting, Marie Blanton and Sara Chi for assistance with training and data collection, research interns, and DRC’s Animal Care and Habitat Team for assistance with the pressure washer. Finally, a special thanks to Delta and Reese and all the staff at DRC for their help and cooperation during this project. S.L.K. and P.M.S. were supported by The Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science awarded to S.L.K. This work was supported by a postgraduate research grant awarded to P.M.S. through the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol. P.L.T. was supported by US Office of Naval Research grants N00014-18-1-2062 and N00014-20-1-2709 . The Dolphin Research Center staff were supported by a research grant from Jim and Marjorie Sanger .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Inc.

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10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.063

Full-text PDF (accepted manuscript)
This is the accepted author manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Cell Press at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.063. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.
Accepted author manuscript, 667 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

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Social complexity and communication in bottlenose dolphins
Sorensen, P. M. (Author), King, S. (Supervisor), Havmand Jensen, F. (Supervisor) & Radford, A. (Supervisor), 3 Oct 2023
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

File

Data from: Anthropogenic noise impairs cooperation in bottlenose dolphins
Meyer Sørensen, P. (Creator), Haddock, A. (Creator), Guarino, E. (Creator), Jaakkola, K. (Creator), McMullen, C. (Creator), Havmand Jensen, F. (Creator), L. Tyack, P. (Creator) & King, S. L. (Creator), Dryad, 17 Jan 2022
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.g1jwstqv3, https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.g1jwstqv3 and one more link, https://zenodo.org/record/7545977 (show fewer)
Dataset

Cite this

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abstract = "Highlights•Anthropogenic noise impairs behavioral coordination in a cooperative context•Dolphins modified their vocal signals to facilitate cooperative success•Acoustic compensatory mechanisms are insufficient for overcoming noise impacts•Critical to account for noise impacts on collective tasks in wild animalsSummaryUnderstanding the impact of human disturbance on wildlife populations is of societal importance, with anthropogenic noise known to impact a range of taxa, including mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates. While animals are known to use acoustic and other behavioural mechanisms to compensate for increasing noise at the individual level, our understanding of how noise impacts social animals working together remains limited. Here, we investigated the effect of noise on coordination between two bottlenose dolphins performing a cooperative task. We previously demonstrated that the dolphin dyad can use whistles to coordinate their behaviour, working together with extreme precision . By equipping each dolphin with a sound-and-movement recording tag (DTAG-3) and exposing them to increasing levels of anthropogenic noise, we show that both dolphins nearly doubled their whistle durations and increased whistle amplitude in response to increasing noise. While these acoustic compensatory mechanisms are the same as those frequently used by wild cetaceans, they were insufficient to overcome the effect of noise on behavioural coordination. Indeed, cooperative task success decreased in the presence of noise, dropping from 85% during ambient noise control trials to 62.5% during the highest noise exposure. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate in any non-human species that noise impairs communication between conspecifics performing a cooperative task. Cooperation facilitates vital functions across many taxa and our findings highlight the need to account for the impact of disturbance on functionally important group tasks in wild animal populations.",

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AU - Tyack, Peter

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N2 - Highlights•Anthropogenic noise impairs behavioral coordination in a cooperative context•Dolphins modified their vocal signals to facilitate cooperative success•Acoustic compensatory mechanisms are insufficient for overcoming noise impacts•Critical to account for noise impacts on collective tasks in wild animalsSummaryUnderstanding the impact of human disturbance on wildlife populations is of societal importance, with anthropogenic noise known to impact a range of taxa, including mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates. While animals are known to use acoustic and other behavioural mechanisms to compensate for increasing noise at the individual level, our understanding of how noise impacts social animals working together remains limited. Here, we investigated the effect of noise on coordination between two bottlenose dolphins performing a cooperative task. We previously demonstrated that the dolphin dyad can use whistles to coordinate their behaviour, working together with extreme precision . By equipping each dolphin with a sound-and-movement recording tag (DTAG-3) and exposing them to increasing levels of anthropogenic noise, we show that both dolphins nearly doubled their whistle durations and increased whistle amplitude in response to increasing noise. While these acoustic compensatory mechanisms are the same as those frequently used by wild cetaceans, they were insufficient to overcome the effect of noise on behavioural coordination. Indeed, cooperative task success decreased in the presence of noise, dropping from 85% during ambient noise control trials to 62.5% during the highest noise exposure. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate in any non-human species that noise impairs communication between conspecifics performing a cooperative task. Cooperation facilitates vital functions across many taxa and our findings highlight the need to account for the impact of disturbance on functionally important group tasks in wild animal populations.

AB - Highlights•Anthropogenic noise impairs behavioral coordination in a cooperative context•Dolphins modified their vocal signals to facilitate cooperative success•Acoustic compensatory mechanisms are insufficient for overcoming noise impacts•Critical to account for noise impacts on collective tasks in wild animalsSummaryUnderstanding the impact of human disturbance on wildlife populations is of societal importance, with anthropogenic noise known to impact a range of taxa, including mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates. While animals are known to use acoustic and other behavioural mechanisms to compensate for increasing noise at the individual level, our understanding of how noise impacts social animals working together remains limited. Here, we investigated the effect of noise on coordination between two bottlenose dolphins performing a cooperative task. We previously demonstrated that the dolphin dyad can use whistles to coordinate their behaviour, working together with extreme precision . By equipping each dolphin with a sound-and-movement recording tag (DTAG-3) and exposing them to increasing levels of anthropogenic noise, we show that both dolphins nearly doubled their whistle durations and increased whistle amplitude in response to increasing noise. While these acoustic compensatory mechanisms are the same as those frequently used by wild cetaceans, they were insufficient to overcome the effect of noise on behavioural coordination. Indeed, cooperative task success decreased in the presence of noise, dropping from 85% during ambient noise control trials to 62.5% during the highest noise exposure. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate in any non-human species that noise impairs communication between conspecifics performing a cooperative task. Cooperation facilitates vital functions across many taxa and our findings highlight the need to account for the impact of disturbance on functionally important group tasks in wild animal populations.

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DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.063

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JO - Current Biology

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Anthropogenic noise impairs cooperation in bottlenose dolphins

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Student theses

Social complexity and communication in bottlenose dolphins

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Data from: Anthropogenic noise impairs cooperation in bottlenose dolphins

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