Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:18:14.642Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social structure of bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, in Panama City, Florida

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2010

Th. Bouveroux  and
J. Mallefet
Th. Bouveroux*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Biologie Marine, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
J. Mallefet
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Biologie Marine, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: Th. Bouveroux, Laboratory of Marine Biology (BMAR), Kellner building (d-1), Place Croix du Sud, 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social organization is an important attribute of the animal society. We describe the social structure of a bottlenose dolphins population living in Panama City, a seaside resort located on the north-west coast of Florida. Study was conducted with 46 individuals. Dolphins are associated on average half weight index of 0.11. Preferred long-term associations are observed. The proportion of the non-zero association indices suggests that some dolphins seem to avoid others. Associations between and within sex-classes were investigated using only dolphins of known sex and observed at least 4 times. Highly significant differences are found in associations between and within sex-classes (Mantel test, t = 3.7987; P = 1); indeed, male associations are stronger than between inter-sexual associations or between females only. Sociogram of males reveals a complex network with strong associations between pairs or trios that reach up to 0.97, whereas female associations are lower than males. The cluster analysis shows no clear division in the social organization of bottlenose dolphins in Panama City, except for dyads, triads and their multiple networks. The population structure seems to be temporally stable over the study and constant companionships are observed in the dolphin population in Panama City.

Keywords

bottlenose dolphinTursiops truncatussocial structurealliancesfission–fusion
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 90 , Special Issue 8: Marine Mammals , December 2010 , pp. 1685 - 1692
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baird, R.W. and Whitehead, H. (2000) Social organization of mammal-eating killer whales: group stability and dispersal patterns. Canadian Journal of Zoology 78, 2096–2105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bejder, L., Fletcher, D. and Bräger, S. (1998) A method for testing association patterns of social animals. Animal Behaviour 56, 719–725.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chilvers, B.L. and Corkeron, P.J. (2002) Association patterns of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) off Point Lookout, Queensland, Australia. Canadian Journal of Zoology 80, 973–979.Google Scholar
Connor, R.C., Smolker, R.A. and Richards, A.F. (1992) Two levels of alliance formation among bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 89, 987–990.Google Scholar
Connor, R.C., Heithaus, M.R. and Barre, L.M. (1999) Superalliance of bottlenose dolphins. Nature 397, 571–572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connor, R.C., Wells, R.S., Mann, J. and Read, A.J. (2000) The bottlenose dolphin: social relationships in a fission–fusion society. In Mann, J., Connor, R.C., Tyack, P.L. and Whitehead, H. (eds) Cetacean societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 91–126.Google Scholar
Connor, R.C., Heithaus, M.R. and Barre, L.M. (2001) Complex social structure, alliance stability and mating access in a bottlenose dolphin ‘super-alliance’. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London 268, 263–267.Google Scholar
de Stephanis, R., Verborgh, P., Pérez, S., Esteban, R., Minvielle-Sebastia, L. and Guinet, C. (2008) Long-term social structure of long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas) in the Strait of Gibraltar. Acta Ethologica 11, 81–94. DOI 10.1007/s10211-008-0045-2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Félix, F. (1997) Organisation and social structure of coastal bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus in the Gulf de Guayaquil, Ecuador. Aquatic Mammals 23, 1–16.Google Scholar
Gero, S., Bejder, L., Whitehead, H., Mann, J. and Connor, R.C. (2005) Behaviourally specific preferred associations in bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops spp. Canadian Journal of Zoology 83, 1566–1573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keppner, L.A. and Keppner, E.J. (2005) Tracked and protected species in Bay County and the St. Andrew Bay ecosystem, Florida. Best BIODIV. Subcommittee of the Bay Environmental Study Team (BEST) Public, No. 0007, 22 pp.Google Scholar
Le Pendu, Y., Ciofolo, I. and Gosser, A. (2000) Social organization of giraffes in Niger. Afrcan Journal of Ecology 38, 78–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lettevall, E., Richter, C., Jaquet, N., Slooten, E., Dawson, S., Whitehead, H., Christal, J. and McCall, H.P. (2002) Social structure and residency in aggregations of male sperm whales. Canadian Journal of Zoology 80, 1189–1196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lusseau, D., Schneider, K., Boisseau, O.J., Haase, P., Slooten, E. and Dawson, S.M. (2003) The bottlenose dolphin community of Doubtful Sound features a large proportion of long lasting associations. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 54, 396–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lusseau, D., Wilson, B., Grellier, K., Hammond, P.S., Durban, J.W., Parsons, K.M., Barton, T.M. and Thompson, P.M. (2006) Quantifying the influence of sociality on population structure in bottlenose dolphins. Journal of Animal Ecology 75, 14–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Möller, L.M., Beheregaray, L.B., Harcourt, R.G. and Krützen, M. (2001) Alliance membership and kindship in wild male bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) of southeastern Australia. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London 268, 1941–1947.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Packer, C. (1977) Reciprocal altruism in Papio anubis. Nature 265, 285–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quintana-Rizzo, E. and Wells, R.S. (2001) Resighting and association patterns of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the Cedar Keys, Florida: Insights into social organization. Canadian Journal Zoology 79, 447–456.Google Scholar
Samuels, A. and Bejder, L. (2004) Chronic interaction between humans and free-ranging bottlenose dolphins near Panama City Beach, Florida, USA. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management 6, 69–77.Google Scholar
Shane, S. (1990) Behavior and ecology of the bottlenose at Sanibel Island, Florida. In Leatherwood, S. and Reeves, R.R. (eds) The bottlenose dolphin. San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 245–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smolker, R.A., Richards, A.F., Connor, R.C. and Pepper, J.W. (1992) Sex differences in patterns of association among Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins. Behaviour 123, 38–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urian, K.W., Hohn, A. and Hansen, L.J. (1999) Status of the photo-identification catalog of coastal bottlenose dolphins of the Western North Atlantic: report of a workshop of catalog contributions. US Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-SEFSC-425.24.Google Scholar
Watts, D.P. (1998) Coalitionary mate guarding by male chimpanzees at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 44, 43–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, R.S, Scott, M.D. and Irvine, B.A. (1987) The social structure of free-ranging bottlenose dolphins. In Genoways, H.H. (ed.) Current mammalogy, Volume 1. New York and London: Plenum Press, pp. 247–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, R.S. (1991) The role of long-term study in understanding the social structure of a bottlenose dolphin community. In Pryor, K. and Norris, K. (eds) Dolphin societies—discoveries and puzzles. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 199–226.Google Scholar
Wilson, B., Hammond, P.S. and Thompson, P.M. (1999) Estimating size and assessing trends in a coastal bottlenose dolphins population. Ecological Applications 9, 288–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, H. (1995) Investigating structure and temporal scale in social organisations using identified individuals. Behavioral Ecology 6, 199–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, H. (2006) SOCPROG. Programs for analysing social structure. Dalhousie University, Canada.Google Scholar
Whitehead, H. (2008a) Precision and power in the analysis of social structure using associations. Animal Behaviour 75, 1093–1099.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, H. (2008b) Analysing animal societies: quantitative methods for vertebrate social analyses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 336 pp.Google Scholar
Würsig, B. and Würsig, M. (1977) The photographic determination of group size, composition, and stability of coastal porpoises (Tursiops truncatus). Science 198, 755–756.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Würsig, B. and Jefferson, Th. (1990) Methods of photo-identification for small cetaceans. Report of the International Whaling Commission (Special issue) 12, 43–52.Google Scholar