Publications by authors named "Olive Andrews"

Culture, a pillar of the remarkable ecological success of humans, is increasingly recognized as a powerful force structuring nonhuman animal populations. A key gap between these two types of culture is quantitative evidence of symbolic markers-seemingly arbitrary traits that function as reliable indicators of cultural group membership to conspecifics. Using acoustic data collected from 23 Pacific Ocean locations, we provide quantitative evidence that certain sperm whale acoustic signals exhibit spatial patterns consistent with a symbolic marker function.

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Cultural transmission of behaviour is important in a wide variety of vertebrate taxa from birds to humans. Vocal traditions and vocal learning provide a strong foundation for studying culture and its transmission in both humans and cetaceans. Male humpback whales () perform complex, culturally transmitted song displays that can change both evolutionarily (through accumulations of small changes) or revolutionarily (where a population rapidly adopts a novel song).

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In the context of a changing climate, understanding the environmental drivers of marine megafauna distribution is important for conservation success. The extent of humpback whale breeding habitats and the impact of temperature variation on their availability are both unknown. We used 19 years of dedicated survey data from seven countries and territories of Oceania (1,376 survey days), to investigate humpback whale breeding habitat diversity and adaptability to climate change.

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