Dear all, The following paper appeared online earlier in the year, but we are pleased to announce it is now available with a full citation. Nicola J. Quick and Vincent M. Janik (2012). Bottlenose dolphins exchange signature whistles when meeting at sea. Proc. R. Soc. B 279; 2539-2545 ABSTRACT: The bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, is one of very few animals that, through vocal learning, can invent novel acoustic signals and copy whistles of conspecifics. Furthermore, receivers can extract identity information from the invented part of whistles. In captivity, dolphins use such signature whistles while separated from the rest of their group. However, little is known about how they use them at sea. If signature whistles are the main vehicle to transmit identity information, then dolphins should exchange these whistles in contexts where groups or individuals join. We used passive acoustic localization during focal boat follows to observe signature whistle use in the wild. We found that stereotypic whistle exchanges occurred primarily when groups of dolphins met and joined at sea. A sequence analysis verified that most of the whistles used during joins were signature whistles. Whistle matching or copying was not observed in any of the joins. The data show that signature whistle exchanges are a significant part of a greeting sequence that allows dolphins to identify conspecifics when encountering them in the wild. A pdf copy of the work can be obtained from the lead author at njq@smru.co.uk Best Regards Nicola Quick Dr Nicola Quick Senior Research Scientist Scottish Oceans Institute SMRU Ltd New Technology Centre North Haugh St Andrews Fife KY16 9SR Scotland email: njq@smru.co.uk http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/staffProfile.aspx?sunID=njq Tel: +44 (0)1334 479100 Fax: +44 (0)1334 477878 www.smru.co.uk http://soi.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please consider whether you really need a hard copy of this email before printing it - thank you. NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIALITY: This message, and any attachments, are intended solely for the addressee and may contain privileged or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you believe that you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately and destroy this email. Although we have taken steps to ensure that this email and any attachments are free from any virus, we advise that, in keeping with good computing practice, the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free. SMRU LIMITED is a limited company registered in Scotland, Registered Number: 296937. Registered Office: 5 Atholl Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 8EJ.