Distribution and habitat use of small cetaceans off Abrolhos Bank, eastern Brazil

Report of the Working Group on the Distribution of Tursiops truncatus in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean

“…This network monitors systematically, but not uniformly, 2437km of coastline. Through this network, 71 strandings of bottlenose dolphins were reported along the northeast coast between 1992 and 2010: Ceará (n = 13), Rio Grande do Norte (n = 14), Paraíba (n = 2), Pernambuco (n = 24), Alagoas (n = 2) and Bahia (n = 16) (Alves-Júnior et al, 1996;Meirelles et al, 2009;2016 this volume Santos et al, 2006).…”

Disentangling social networks from spatiotemporal dynamics: the temporal structure of a dolphin society

“…Lusseau et al 2006;Wiszniewski et al 2009). Habitat preferences would be expected to shape the Guiana dolphin social network in the Caravelas estuary because dolphins in this population inhabit a patchy mosaic of habitats, from innerriver regions to offshore coral reefs, in a heterogeneous manner (Rossi- Santos et al 2006Santos et al , 2010. Additionally, individuals have relatively small individual ranges (Rossi- Santos et al 2007).…”

“…Our studied population, however, brings on the challenge of dealing with those mechanisms that could mask the interpretation of real social processes. Fortunately, this is a propitious system to explore the influence of spatiotemporal dynamics in the social network structure because the studied area encompasses a large and highly heterogeneous habitat (Rossi- Santos et al 2006), and the study duration (8 years) facilitated observation of demographic changes . First, we examined whether the fluid social pattern related to a fissionefusion dynamics suggested for this species (Santos & Rosso 2008) could be organized into the predicted modular network presented in Fig.…”

Report of the Working Group on the Behavioral Ecology of bottlenose dolphins in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean

“…Off northeastern Brazil, oceanic populations seem to comprise small groups (average of eight individuals) around key geographical features, like the Abrolhos Bank (Rossi-Santos et al, 2006), Rocas Atoll (Baracho et al, 2007) and Trindade Island (Carvalho and Rossi-Santos, 2011). At the SPSPA, groups of one to 18 bottlenose dolphins have been observed 2 (Caon et al, 2009;Ott et al, 2009).…”