Assumptions and altruism

I recently read "Among Whales" by Roger Payne. For those who haven't read it, it's his account of living in Argentina and working with right whales, and some of his ideas on science and whales that he hasn't actually done the research to back up, etc. He mentions that if his ideas provoke someone into trying to disprove them, he'd be glad. Well. Consider me provoked.

One of his ideas is that fin whales produce 20 Hz sounds in order to advertise food patches to the rest of the "herd" in the Southern Ocean. Over a whale's lifetime, it will be both the advertiser and the recipient, and the process will continue by reciprocal altruism as all whales benefit and contribute by turns. Sounds all nice and cuddly, doesn't it? But when I read that portion (multiple times, mind you, just to be sure I wasn't missing some key part that would make the whole idea make sense) all that struck me was that he was assuming that no one was cheating (listening without advertising in return), and that no other species were involved. Maybe my background in game theory and ecological modeling shaped my opinions, but why should fin whales advertise patches of krill to other species (blue whales, humpbacks, etc) that very probably can hear and interpret the 20 Hz calls? It made no sense to me, so I started looking for published studies.

One paper from Nature found that only male fin whales in a certain area were producing sounds (9 of 21 males calling; 0 of 22 females calling). Reciprocal altruism under those conditions would not work; all females are thus "cheaters". And what about the non-calling males? Were they not in a food patch at the time, or were they just not advertising that they had found food? The authors of the paper postulate that the calling males are advertising food patches to females in order to secure mating opportunities based on the following facts: 1) only males called; 2) the study area was used for feeding; 3) the calls are acoustically optimal for long distance signalling; and 4) fin whales do not aggregate in specific areas for breeding.

I am willing to be convinced that male fin whales may "mate gift" food patches to females before mating, but the reasoning in the Nature paper seems very weak. I'm reminded of a study breeding amphibians, in which certain males produced calls to attract females, while "satellite" males lurked near the callers and waited for females to approach. When they did, the satellite would attempt to "steal" a mating opportunity from the caller. Isn't it possible that fin whales follow the same strategy? A silent male locates a caller and lurks nearby until the female approaches for food. Then, he either attempts to mate, or begins to call only when he knows a female is nearby. Or, he simply eats the food himself and benefits in that way.

The evidence that I would need to be convinced of "mate gifting" is 1) a long term, individual based study on which males call when; and whether or not they are consistently next to food when they call, 2) a study of paternity in which calling males have increased breeding success as opposed to silent males, and 3) a study indicating that females are indeed attracted to 20 Hz calls during the breeding season. (I am under the impression that the calls are highly seasonal, which is appropriate to a mating display. If they are not seasonal, and still males are the only callers, I would still want evidence from studies 1 & 2 above.)

Reciprocal altruism is difficult to prove at the best of times, and systems of large, long-lived, fast-moving, and geographically widespread animals are NOT ideal for altruism studies. I admit that it may be found in some cetacean species; however, it requires a huge burden of proof, and this system currently does not have that.

Philosophy of science

One of my courses this semester is a reading/discussion class, and we're doing a unit on the philosophy of science. This week, we read two papers, one on the merits of multiple working hypotheses, and one on "strong inference", which dealt with inductive reasoning and falsification of hypotheses. We talked about whether or not we as scientists and ecologists and wildlife managers use these concepts in our research and how we could or should apply them.

I think it's a discussion that every scientist and aspiring scientist should have - our group started out making excuses for why we don't use the elegant designs and "crucial experiments" that the strong inference paper talked about. Government regulations, messy systems, and the issues of fundamentals versus nitty-gritty details all came up and were good points. But as a scientist, if you don't ask the questions in the right way, you will waste time and resources trying to solve your problem. This is especially relevant in my field, as boats and field seasons in general are not cheap, and permits to "take" whales are rare and difficult to come by.

My advisor solves this problem by drawing logical trees as she plans a project or an analysis. What is our main question? What data do we need to answer it clearly? What methods could we use to gather this data? (or, in the event that we have a dataset already: what questions can we answer with this data set? Do we need additional information? How do we get that? What steps do we need to take before we can answer the question?), but I don't know that she's ever thought of falsifying a hypothesis rather than proving one. Because as the paper points out, it is impossible to actually PROVE anything in science. Can you prove that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? No, though logically it probably will, as it has always done so before. However, if the sun happens to rise in the west, the hypothesis that the sun always rises in the east is shot down and disproved. There can be overwhelming evidence that backs up a hypothesis or theory (think evolution by natural selection), but it is still a theory. We might find something that disproves it someday. Lack of evidence is NOT evidence of lack.

On the other hand, something that cannot be disproved is NOT a scientific hypothesis (think "intelligent design"). "Certain things are so complex that they must have been designed by a creator that we can't perceive except through his works" is not falsifiyable. You can't prove that the creator doesn't exist. etc etc etc. This bit has been covered so frequently that I'm not going to go further into it here.

The point of the discussion was to think critically about the design of your experiments and your hypotheses before you actually get into the nitty gritty work. Simple and elegant is the thing to strive for, even if your work deals with messy, restricted systems that don't easily lend themselves to uncomplicated tests.

Silence

When I get bored, I'm likely to go to a bookstore. Tonight, having left work at 5pm (which seems obscenely early for me, as I'm used to being on campus for much longer than 9 hours at a go), I ended up at Barnes and Noble, cruising around not really interested in any of sections I usually go to for reading material.

I ended up in the nature section, and by sheer chance stumbled on Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann's book One Square Inch of Silence. I'm less than two chapters in, at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. Essentially, it's the story of an acoustic ecologist trying to preserve one square inch of area in the continental US that has no human sound intrusions. He traveled from Washington state to Washington DC making recordings along the way and meeting with politicians at the end. If you have the time, go read this book. Please. The more people that know about the value of silence in a noisy world, the better.