Performance of a contour-based classification method for whistles of Mediterranean delphinids

Whistles from five delphinid species in the western Mediterranean Sea (Stenella coeruleoalba, Grampus griseus, Delphinus delphis, Tursiops truncatus, Globicephala melas) were taken from GREC sound archives. FFT contours (window size 512, Hanning, sampling frequency 44.1 kHz) were extracted with custom developed Matlab software: 277 samples of striped dolphins (Sc), 158 whistles of Risso’s dolphins (Gg), 120 of common dolphins (Dd), 76 of bottlenose dolphins (Tt), and 66 of pilot whales (Gm) were selected. Seafox software extracted 15 variables from the digitized contours, including: duration, initial, final, maximal and minimal frequency slopes, frequency range, number of frequency extrema, beginning, ending, maximal and minimal frequencies, presence of harmonics. Four of five species were significantly different (Mann–Whitney test) for average durations (respectively 0.73, 0.65, 0.47 and 0.89 s for Sc, Gg, Dd, Gm) while the average duration of bottlenose dolphins was 0.71 s. Frequency ranges (respectively 7.3, 6.3, 4.6, 3.2 and 6.3 kHz) were significantly different for all species pairs, with the exception of bottlenose and Risso’s dolphins. From a global point of view, pilot whale calls were the most distinct, with 43 significant pair-wise tests out of a total of 52, followed by the common dolphins. Risso’s dolphins were closest to other species whistles. A CART classification method achieved a global classification rate of 62.9%.