A stochastic measure of similarity between dolphin signature whistles

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dc.contributor.authorStuby, Richard George Jr.en
dc.contributor.committeechairBeex, A. A. Louisen
dc.contributor.committeememberRicci, Fred J.en
dc.contributor.committeememberVanLandingham, Hugh F.en
dc.contributor.departmentElectrical Engineeringen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T20:32:22Zen
dc.date.adate2009-03-04en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T20:32:22Zen
dc.date.issued1993-03-01en
dc.date.rdate2012-03-16en
dc.date.sdate2009-03-04en
dc.description.abstractBottlenose dolprlin (Tursiops trunratus) whistles are currently studied by subjective visual comparison of whistle spectrograms. This thesis describes the novel use of stochastic modeling to automate the comparison of dolphin whistles and to yield an objective, quantitative measure of whistle similarity. The relationship of bottlenose dolphin whistle production to a model of human speech production is discussed, providing a basis for the use of human speech recognition techniques for creating whistle models. Discrete hidden Markov models based on vector quantization of linear prediction coefficients are used to create whistle models based on statistical information derived from a sample set of dolphin whistles. Whistle model comparison results are presented indicating that evaluation of bottlenose dolphin whistles via hidden Markov modeling provides an objective measure of similarity between whistles. The results also demonstrate that hidden Markov models provide robustness against the effects of temporal and frequency variance in the comparison of whistles. The extensibility of stochastic modeling techniques to other animal vocalizations is discussed and possibilities for further work in areas such as the determination of possible structural components, similar to phonemes in human speech, is provided.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Scienceen
dc.format.extentv, 131 leavesen
dc.format.mediumBTDen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.otheretd-03042009-040851en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03042009-040851/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/31408en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartLD5655.V855_1993.S783.pdfen
dc.relation.isformatofOCLC# 28513971en
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subject.lccLD5655.V855 1993.S783en
dc.subject.lcshBottlenose dolphin -- Vocalizationen
dc.subject.lcshWhistle speechen
dc.titleA stochastic measure of similarity between dolphin signature whistlesen
dc.typeThesisen
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten
thesis.degree.disciplineElectrical Engineeringen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen

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