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Whales have a remarkable social structure much like that in humans and other primates. They form hierarchical societies. In the journal Nature Communications, EBIO graduate student Lauren Shoemaker and colleagues show for the first time that this hierarchical structure is formed by whale song. Their stems from a summer project in complex systems at the . It combines an eighteen year data set on sperm whale sightings and songs near the Galapagos from lead author Maurício Cantor’s lab group with Shoemaker and colleagues’ expertise in mathematical biology. Using computer models, the researchers demonstrated that the complex social hierarchy observed in sperm whales is unlikely to originate by chance or through genetics. Instead, their models suggest that the social hierarchy is formed via processes associated with cultural learning of songs, such as preferential learning. Shoemaker is a student in the , the , and the . More information about their study can be found .                                                   Photo credit to M Cantor Whitehead Lab Dalhousie