Humpback whales match song production to dive patterns. Zeh et al.

Understanding the function and origin of a complex animal display requires a holistic study of its performance. Among animal displays, humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) song is remarkable for its hierarchical structure, syntax, and cultural transmission – but it has been challenging to study the performance as a whole, leaving the role of movement in humpback whale song overlooked. Using temporarily attached sound and movement recording tags, we discovered a tight correspondence between dives and songs of humpback whales, which were repeated without stopping for up to 16 hours. Repeating song elements, known as themes, were linked to specific parts of a dive. The themes produced during ascent and descent were consistent across individuals and years, while a greater number of theme types occurred at depth. Different levels of song component variability across dive phases suggests that features of themes produced during the bottom portion of a dive, where the depth is stable, are more likely to be driven by song sharing under sexual selection. Movement during song performance illustrates important connections between physiology, environment, and behavior for learned, rhythmic acoustic displays. This dataset (.zip file) consists of continuous spectrogram images of song examples corresponding to each of the specific themes discussed in the corresponding manuscript. The images consist of an example full song from one dive from March 4, 2020, Jan 14, 2022, and January 13, 2024. The timestamps on the spectrogram images correspond with timestamps of individual units (along with labels of the theme and dive phase that unit corresponds to) in the CSV file in the supplemental materials of the manuscript. Further details can be found in the manuscript.要理解复杂动物行为展示的功能与起源，需对其行为表现开展整体性研究。在各类动物行为展示中，座头鲸（Megaptera novaeangliae）的鸣唱以其层级化结构、句法规则与文化传承特性而引人注目，但此前难以对其整体行为表现开展研究，导致座头鲸鸣唱中运动的作用长期被忽视。本研究借助临时附着的声音与运动记录标签，发现座头鲸的潜水行为与鸣唱存在紧密关联，二者可连续循环长达16小时。重复出现的鸣唱单元即鸣唱主题（theme），与潜水的特定阶段存在关联。座头鲸在上升与下潜阶段产生的鸣唱主题在不同个体与年份间均保持一致，而在深水阶段则出现了更多类型的鸣唱主题。不同潜水阶段的鸣唱组件变异程度存在差异，这表明在潜水底部（深度稳定的区域）产生的鸣唱主题特征，更可能是由性选择下的鸣唱共享所驱动的。鸣唱过程中的运动模式，揭示了习得性节律声学展示的生理学、环境与行为学之间的重要关联。 本数据集（.zip格式文件）包含与对应研究论文中讨论的各特定鸣唱主题匹配的连续声谱图（spectrogram）图像。这些图像涵盖了2020年3月4日、2022年1月14日及2024年1月13日三次独立潜水过程中的完整鸣唱示例。声谱图上的时间戳与论文补充材料中CSV文件内的单个鸣唱单元时间戳一一对应，同时附带该单元所属鸣唱主题与潜水阶段的标注。更多详细信息可查阅该研究论文。