News Finding: Close
  
  Researchers find a reduction in the complexity of dolphin whistles as a result of increased ship noise.
Paper Finding: Increases in ship noise, both within and below the dolphins' call bandwidth, resulted in higher dolphin whistle frequencies and a reduction in whistle contour complexity, an acoustic feature associated with individual identification.
News Context: Close
  
  Researchers find a reduction in the complexity of dolphin whistles as a result of increased ship noise. What they found was that the increases in vessel noises resulted in higher whistle frequencies with reductions in complexity. In other words, the dolphins whistled more, but with much less complexity.
Paper Context: Elevated ambient noise levels were mainly caused by ship noise. Increases in ship noise, both within and below the dolphins' call bandwidth, resulted in higher dolphin whistle frequencies and a reduction in whistle contour complexity, an acoustic feature associated with individual identification. Consequently, the noiseinduced simplification of dolphin whistles may reduce the information content in these acoustic signals and decrease effective communication, parent -offspring proximity or group cohesion.