The diffusion of cooperative and solo bubble net feeding in Canadian Pacific humpback whales
AUTHORS: Janie Wray; Éadin N. O’Mahony; Grace Baer; Nicole Robinson; Archie Dundas; Oscar E. Gaggiotti; Luke Rendell; Eric M. Keen
PUBLICATION: Proceedings B | The Royal Society
Abstract: Animal culture, information and behaviours acquired and shared by social learning are a form of biodiversity with intrinsic and practical value. Cooperative foraging, a mutualistic resource acquisition behaviour observed across diverse taxa, is strongly connected to social networks via behavioural states, cues and often social learning, as it typically involves high interaction rates. Understanding the distribution, diffusion and learning mechanisms of such cooperative behaviours is an important but understudied aspect of nonhuman culture. Bubble net feeding (‘bubble netting’) is a specialized foraging technique practised by certain humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) populations globally. Over 20 years in the northern Canadian Pacific, we observed the diffusion of two forms: cooperative group and independent (or ‘solo’) bubble netting. Network-based diffusion analysis—a tool to test for social learning—finds strong evidence for social learning of bubble netting when the overall social network is used, even after accounting for traits such as site fidelity and sex (10.6 × 103 to 35.4 × 103 times more support for social versus asocial learning; p < 0.0001). A homophily check using pre-acquisition association data returned ambiguous results, likely due to the inherent sociality of this cooperative foraging behaviour. Nonetheless, the rapid diffusion of bubble netting is clearly important for population viability and should inform conservation planning for this threatened population.
Related Posts
A decade of visual surveys (2005-2014) revealed that humpbacks Megaptera novaeangliae occupy a temperate fjord system in British Columbia, Canada, in a wave pattern that propagates from outer channels in the summer to deep inland channels in late fall.
Rorqual whales (f. Balaenopteridae) supposedly respond to increases in prey supply according to both aggregative and feeding thresholds. With the former, they gather in areas above a minimum prey density set by their basal metabolic needs.
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) were hunted commercially in Canada’s Pacific region until 1966. Depleted to an estimated 1,400 individuals throughout the North Pacific, humpback whales are listed as Threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) and Endangered under the US Endangered Species Act.
