The Dolphin Innovation Project and Dolphin Alliance Project were well represented at the recent biennial conference of the Society for Marine Mammalogy held in beautiful San Francisco, California. Richard gave a presentation on yet another fascinating finding from the long-running research into male alliances, and special congrats go to PhD students Whitney and Sonja, who gave their first international conference presentations. Stephanie’s earlier research on signature whistles in dolphins also got covered in Professor Peter Tyack’s plenary talk.

Following are the presentation titles and authors (Shark Bay Dolphin Research Alliance members in bold and those who presented underlined). As well as these four(*) presentations specifically by members of the SBDRA, we contributed to numerous other posters, speed talks and full presentations by our friends, colleagues and associates at other labs/research groups:

*1. “Consortship rate and alliance structure vary with habitat in a large bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops cf. aduncus) social network.” Talk by Richard Connor, William Cioffi, Srdan Randic, Jana Watson-Capps, Simon Allen, William Sherwin and Michael Krützen

*2. “Social complexity among bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus): Dynamic third-order relationships and processes of mediation.” Talk by Whitney Friedman, Richard Connor, Michael Krützen and Edwin Hutchins

*3. “Female dolphins who are heterozygous for MHC do not produce more offspring, but their offspring are more viable.” Talk by Oliver Manlik, Janet Mann, Michael Krützen, Anna M Kopps, Holly C Smith, Kate R Sprogis, Lars Bejder; Simon Allen, Richard C Connor, William B Sherwin.

*4. “Shelling out for dinner: Evidence for horizontal social transmission of a remarkable foraging strategy in a wild dolphin population.” Poster by Sonja Wild, William JE Hoppitt, Simon J Allen and Michael Krützen

5. “Estimating the proportion of unmarked individuals in delphinid populations”. Poster by Krista Nicholson, Michael Krützen, Simon J Allen and Kenneth H Pollock

6. “Sexual dimorphism and geographic variation in dorsal fin features of Australian humpback dolphins.” Poster by Alexander M Brown, Lars Bejder, Guido J Parra, Daniele Cagnazzi, Tim Hunt, Jennifer L Smith and Simon J Allen

7. “Bite me: Inferring predation risk from the prevalence of shark bites among three tropical inshore dolphin species in north-western Australia.” Poster by Felix Smith, Simon J Allen, Lars Bejder and Alexander M Brown

8. “Australian humpback dolphins (Sousa sahulensis) of the North West Cape, Western Australia: An important habitat toward the south western limit of their range” Speed talk by Tim Hunt, Lars Bejder, Simon J Allen and Guido J Parra

9. “Introducing the Australian humpback dolphin (Sousa sahulensis): Biology and status of the World’s ‘newest’ dolphin species.” Poster by Thomas A Jefferson, Guido J Parra, Simon J Allen, Isabel Beasley, Alex Brown, Daniele Cagnazzi, Tim Hunt and Carol Palmer

We look forward to presenting more of our research and catching up with friends and colleagues in Halifax for the 2017 conference.