2010

Age-related multi-year associations in female humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae)

Abstract: Analyses of social structures in baleen whales are rare, and so far, they are thought to consist of mostly short and unstable associations. We investigated the association patterns of individual humpback whales from a summer feeding aggregation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence from 1997 to 2005. Photo-identified animals were sexed using genetic methods and were grouped into five...

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Sex-specific survival in the humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada

Abstract: Sex-biased adult mortality is commonly observed in the animal kingdom. In mammals, a predominantly male-biased mortality is found in species with a polygynous mating system, while in monogamous taxa, female-biased mortality prevails. In the largest of all mammals, the Mysticeti, no sex-specific mortality has been found so far apart from that found in biased whaling data. We estimated sex-specific...

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