Vocal learning and cultural transmission in southern elephant seals
Sanvito, Simona1,2; Galimberti, Filippo2; Miller, Edward H.1

(1) Department of Biology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s NF
A1B 3X9, Canada
(2) Elephant Seal Research Group, Islas San Benitos, Baja California, Mexico

Vocal learning in mammals is sparsely documented, and there is scarce published
evidence for vocal learning by wild mammals. In particular, there is no
information of intra-specific copying of natural, socially relevant sounds,
based on longitudinal data of recognized individuals, even for well-studied,
highly social species in which vocal communication is an important aspect of
social life. We present such information for the southern elephant seal
(Mirounga leonina). We studied a small breeding population on the Falkland
Islands over 8 years (1995-2002). We recorded ~2400 vocalizations from ~285
different males, including many recorded over >1 breeding season (55 males were
recorded for >2 yr and 29 were recorded throughout vocal development).
Vocalizations are a key element of male agonistic behaviour in this species, the
world’s most highly polygynous of all vertebrates. For the male agonistic
vocalizations, we show that: (1) young males present plastic, non stereotyped
vocalizations; (2) mature males vocalizations are structurally complex,
stereotyped, and individually distinctive, and each male emits only one kind of
vocalization, as identified by the specific arrangement of syllables and
syllable parts; (3) a limited number of vocal types exists, as recognized from
visual inspection of waveforms and spectrograms, and these types present also
large differences in the fine acoustic structure (temporal, frequency, intensity
features) that enable their reliable classification; (4) the relative
frequencies of vocal types in the population change over years; (5) the trends
of increase or decrease of the different vocal types is well in accordance to a
process of vocal imitation by younger peripheral males of the vocal types of
older main breeders.