The Next Big Star?

Here's a shot from a couple of years ago:

Humpback Whale, (Megaptera novaeangliae), Kenai Fjords NP,
Seward, AK 8/5/2012

This, of course, is a Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), just off the south coast of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska.

So what does that shot have to do with this one?

White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucurus),
Illinois Beach SP, Lake Co, IL 10/4/2011

This is a very different critter, a White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucurus). And just like the 40-ton whale, the 1-oz. sparrow is a textbook example (literally, that is) of vocal learning. White-crowned Sparrows show distinct local song dialects, and have been demonstrated to actually learn them. Humpback Whales sing long, complex songs during the winter breeding season.

Whales, though, do something that the sparrows don't do. They change their songs a bit every year, but those changes are population-wide. So all of the whales wintering in Hawaii will sing this year's top hit, even though they each put their own little spin on it. (1) Even with these changes, whales in each population are clearly distinguishable. (2) This is an unusual pattern -- among birds, I'm only aware of it occurring in Three-wattled Bellbirds (Procnias tricarunculata) in central America. (3)

When whales get lost, they can have surprising impacts on other populations: In the late 1990's, immigrant whales from the eastern Indian Ocean moved into the population in the southwest Pacific Ocean, and triggered a "cultural revolution" in the song types being sung there. Remarkably, even with such a large shift, the entire population went along. (4)

The larger whales were drastically reduced in population during the 19th and 20th century, and despite several decades of recovery, Humpback's still appear to be well below their historic populations. (5,6) This would suggest that movement between oceans is probably much rarer than it used to be. If so, then we would expect that the sort of sudden shifts noted by Noad, et al. were probably much more common just a few hundred years ago, and the sort of slow, yearly change we're now seeing may be an artifact of a severely limited cultural exchange that may have once linked our planet's oceans in a network of artistic fervor that would have been wonderful to hear.

(1) Payne, K., & Payne, R. (1985). Large scale changes over 19 years in songs of humpback whales in Bermuda. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 68(2), 89-114.

(2) Winn, H. E., Thompson, T. J., Cummings, W. C., Hain, J., Hudnall, J., Hays, H., & Steiner, W. W. (1981). Song of the humpback whale—population comparisons. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 8(1), 41-46.

(3) Kroodsma, D., Hamilton, D., Sánchez, J. E., Byers, B. E., Fandiño-Mariño, H., Stemple, D. W., ... & Powell, G. V. (2013). Behavioral Evidence for Song Learning In the Suboscine Bellbirds (Procnias spp.; Cotingidae). The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, 125(1), 1-14.

(4) Noad, M. J., Cato, D. H., Bryden, M. M., Jenner, M. N., & Jenner, K. C. S. (2000). Cultural revolution in whale songs. Nature, 408(6812), 537-537.

(5) Calambokidis, J., & Barlow, J. (2004). Abundance of blue and humpback whales in the eastern North Pacific estimated by capture‐recapture and line‐transect methods. Marine Mammal Science, 20(1), 63-85.

(6) Roman, J., & Palumbi, S. R. (2003). Whales before whaling in the North Atlantic. science, 301(5632), 508-510.