Data from: Cultural turnover among Galápagos sperm whales

While populations may wax and wane, it is rare for an entire population to be replaced by a completely different set of individuals. We document the large-scale relocation of cultural groups of sperm whale off the Galápagos Islands, in which two sympatric vocal clans were entirely replaced by two different ones. Between 1985 and 1999, whales from two clans (called Regular and Plus-One) defined by cultural dialects in coda vocalizations were repeatedly photo-identified off Galápagos. Their occurrence in the area declined through the 1990s; by 2000, none remained. We reassessed Galápagos sperm whales in 2013–2014, identifying 463 new females. However, re-sighting rates were low, with no matches with the Galápagos 1985–1999 population, suggesting an eastward shift to coastal areas. Their vocal repertoires matched those of two other clans (called Short and Four-Plus) found across the Pacific but previously rare or absent around Galápagos. The mechanisms behind this cultural turnover may include large-scale environmental regime shifts favouring clan-specific foraging strategies, and a response to heavy whaling in the region involving redistribution of surviving whales into high-quality habitats. The fall and rise of sperm whale cultures off Galápagos reflect the structuring of the Pacific population into large, enduring clans with dynamic ranges. Long-lasting clan membership illustrates how culture can be bound up in the structure and dynamics of animal populations and so how tracking cultural traits can reveal large-scale population shifts.Cantor_etal_Fig2_EncouterRatesData for plot in Figure 2 (30-by-3 matrix). Column 1 = Year; Column 2 = Encounter rates of sperm whales off the Galapagos Islands (calculated as number of groups of female and immature whales encountered divided by the total hours of acoustic and visual search (i.e. total effort minus time following whales)); Column 3 = Standard Error of the Mean for encounter rates (calculated as [Squareroot(number of encounters)/total hours of sampling effort], assuming Poisson distribution).Cantor_etal_Fig2_EncRate.csvCantor_etal_Fig3a_matrix_labelsSupplementary information for Fig3a_mat.csv file (79-by-2 matrix): group and clan labels for the similarity matrix, in the same order of appearance. Column 1 = Labels for groups of sperm whales photo-identified together (see main text for definition of groups); Column 2 = Vocal clan labels (1=Regular,2=Plus-One,3=WCaribbean,4=Tonga,5=Short,6=FourPlus)Cantor_etal_Fig3a_mat_labels.csvCantor_etal_Fig3a_matrix_similarityData for dendrogram in Figure 3a (79-by-79 matrix). Square similarity of coda repertoires of groups of sperm whales photo-identified together across the Pacific (multivariate similarity of codas of the same click length using the Euclidean distance between their inter-click interval vectors, with basal similarity of b=0.001; equation and full details in Supplementary Material).Cantor_etal_Fig3a_mat.csvCantor_etal_Fig3b_codatype_tableData for table in Figure 3b (27-by-79 matrix). Rows denote coda types, Columns denote coda repertoires of groups of whales photo identified together. Cell values contain relative frequency of coda types (i.e. count of each coda type divided per total in each group). Column 1 = coda type label; Row 1 = group label for whales photo identified together.Cantor_etal_Fig3b_table.cs