Award Abstract Fellow: Raquel-Olguin Jaakkola Proposal number: DBI 9707843 This action funds an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for 1997. This fellowship supports research and training in the area of animal behavior and cognition. The title of the research and training plan is "An experimental technique for testing if dolphin whistles are used as names." @ottlenose dolphins produce individually distinctive "signature" whistles. Previous research has assumed that these whistles function to broadcast individual identity; but it has not been tested whether signature whistles actually label individuals, that is, serve as referential names. This research develops a technique for testing whether dolphins can identify other individual dolphins on the basis of their signature whistles.
