Reny Tyson

Graduate Student

Biological Oceanography
Major Professor: Dr. Douglas Nowacek

Department of Oceanography
Rm 524, OSB
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4320

Research

The Big Bend of Florida represents one of the most significant gaps in our knowledge of wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and the lack of stock structure information prevents the National Marine Fisheries Service from carrying out its appointed function of managing these stocks. In light of recent mass-mortality events and the likelihood of increased development in this area, such estimates must be made so that the area can be monitored appropriately in the future. My research will aim to estimate bottlenose dolphin abundance in an area of the Big Bend of Florida, stretching from St. Vincent Sound to Alligator Harbor, using mark-recapture photographic-identification surveys. My results will be a first step in obtaining precise estimates of the abundance of animals in this area and can be used as a baseline from which future monitoring efforts can be prepared.

I am also interested in nonlinear phenomena (subharmonics, biphonation, frequency jumps, and deterministic chaos) in cetacean vocalizations. These features have largely been ignored and/or excluded in many analyses of animal vocalizations and it is possible that they may convey information about individual identification, fitness of signaler, and/or illness. Recently I described and quantitatively analyzed these nonlinearities in the vocal repertoire of the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalanea glacialis) and the killer whale (Orcinus orca).