Evidence for social role in a dolphin social network |
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Authors: | David Lusseau |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Zoology, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand;(2) Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax, Canada, NS B3H 4J1 |
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Abstract: | Social animals have to take into consideration the behaviour of conspecifics when making decisions to go by their daily lives.
These decisions affect their fitness and there is therefore an evolutionary pressure to try making the right choices. In many
instances individuals will make their own choices and the behaviour of the group will be a democratic integration of everyone’s
decision. However, in some instances it can be advantageous to follow the choice of a few individuals in the group if they
have more information regarding the situation that has arisen. Here I provide early evidence that decisions about shifts in
activity states in a population of bottlenose dolphin follow such a decision-making process. This unshared consensus is mediated
by a non-vocal signal, which can be communicated globally within the dolphin school. These signals are emitted by individuals
that tend to have more information about the behaviour of potential competitors because of their position in the social network.
I hypothesise that this decision-making process emerged from the social structure of the population and the need to maintain
mixed-sex schools. |
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Keywords: | Bottlenose dolphin Unshared consensus Social network Tursiops Behaviour Sociality |
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