I have been very lucky to participate once again in the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, but this time working on my senior thesis, which will allow me to get my degree when I go back to Argentina. I’ve always been attracted to how a simple algal cell could cause such a big change in the [...]

The main motivation for all of us to move into the field of marine mammal communication was to find a way to identify which dolphin makes a sound within an interacting group. This is critical for untangling the patterns of signal and response that make up a system of communication, but it is difficult with [...]

During health assessment sessions in 2010 we began a new set of playback experiments to begin looking at whether dolphins discriminate between signature whistles produced by the owner-dolphin vs. copies of these whistles that are produced by another dolphin. We experimented with a new playback design, the habituation-dishabituation design, in which we played back a [...]

Social behavior, activity budgets and ranging behavior of juvenile bottlenose dolphins change during red tides. They spend less time alone, and they associate in larger, less stable groups, that include a greater diversity of companions. Harmful algae blooms, called red tides in Florida contain neurotoxins which impact prey fish abundance  and potentially dolphin health. New [...]

By  Katie McHugh, PhD, Chicago Zoological Society The juvenile period can be fragile and formative for young animals learning to navigate complex social and ecological environments.  My doctoral dissertation project used the long-term natural laboratory of Sarasota Bay to explore behavioral development of bottlenose dolphins, provide insights into the functional significance of juvenile groups, and [...]

By Laela Sayigh, PhD, WHOI, Vincent Janik, PhD, SMRU, St. Andrews, UK and Peter Tyack, PhD, WHOI This year we had an exciting new development in our dolphin communication studies, by successfully testing the attachment for a newly developed digital acoustic tag, the DTAG version 3. The DTAG v.3 is a powerful, non-invasive tool for [...]

To date, DNA panels for 238 dolphins of the Sarasota Bay community indicate that 51 calves were sired by a male in the community; 20 calves (28%) were not.

This research will reveal the range of variability in developmental trajectories of bottlenose dolphins and provide missing data on how juvenile dolphin behavior patterns vary by sex, age, season, and time since weaning.