Why sound is important to killer whales?

How and why sound is important to animals such as killer whales and why should we care about it?

Harald Yurk is an adjunct professor at the Simon Frazer University.

He is in town to examine the Ph.D. thesis of Anna Selbmann.

Abstract of Haralds talk.
This presentation describes the professional journey of one animal behaviourist to find answers to such questions while not always following a linear path to finding them. Why sound might matter to most living entities has a general and seemingly simple answer. Sound is everywhere on this planet and occurs at every moment creating dynamic soundscapes which influence the evolution of the physiology of hearing, the neurology to process acoustic information and the anatomy to generate sound that can travel through a range of soundscapes influencing the behaviour of intended and sometimes unintended receivers. My earlier research focussed on the signals that animals produce and their social and ecological functions. The dynamics of soundscapes, however, makes sound perception and decoding a complex task and in combination with the variability in communication needs of different species this creates high variability in the sounds they produce. There are, however, means to compare the influences of soundscape on acoustic signalling. For example, birds live in three-dimensional spaces and experience dynamic soundscapes and have developed similar communication processes to those found in marine mammals, such as stereotypical calls and songs. Birds also typically are vocal learners and may have dialects, both of which are features that also occur in marine mammals. The discovery of the influences of soundscapes on how and why signal structures and behaviour have evolved is often serendipitous as it occurs while researchers were listening or analyzing recorded sounds for unrelated purposes. For example, assessing anthropogenic influences on soundscapes can provide insights into the evolution of signal structure and use by determining how noise affects the propagation of signals. My later research focusses more on the importance of soundscape variation that a population or species experiences in conjunction with the social and ecological function of their signals and whether the use of specific signals differs among habitats. I hope to learn more about the evolution of their communication by better understanding the acoustic habitat quality that appears to be important to them. While most of my research on this topic focuses on cetaceans, in particular killer whales, my interest is in better understanding of how acoustic species perceive and operate in their physical and biological environments. Better knowledge on this will inform conservation and protection of acoustic species in general.

Pictured a group of four resident killer whales, two mothers and their offspring travelling in a tight formation. It was taken from land in one of the narrow channels of the waters of Southern British Columbia.