A dolphin calf’s relationship with its mother is crucial for its survival and may be affected by the mother’s preferred mode of interacting with her calf. Mothers from a variety of species exhibit individual differences and stable maternal styles. However, little is known about individual differences in the maternal behaviors of dolphins. We investigated the possibility of maternal styles in dolphins by identifying specific maternal care behaviors in 7 dolphin mothers at two facilities during the first year of each calf’s life. The mothers exhibited different patterns of behavior including proximity maintenance, discipline, and initiation of separations and reunions with calves. These patterns of maternal behaviors suggest that dolphin mothers display a range of maternal styles that appear to be differentiated by level of maternal control. Moreover, a mother may also modify her individual style as her calf matures and as the social context changes.

Beliefs about conducting research and completing major projects, such as master’s theses and dissertations, suggest that previous experience, guidance from a mentor, and cohesive teams are particularly important in boosting the confidence to conduct research in graduate students (research self-efficacy). Although these factors are also thought to be important for undergraduate students, much less is known about undergraduate interest in research and beliefs about conducting research. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the research self-efficacy of undergraduate students attending a minority- and first-generation-serving liberal arts institution. Over 500 undergraduate students attending a small private university in south Texas completed surveys regarding their interest in conducting research, research self-efficacy, and various research experiences. Seventy-one percent were female, 37% were freshman, and 58% majored in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Fifty-four present had never had a research experience other than completing a survey, whereas 17% had completed two or more research experiences. Greater interest in research was associated with higher levels of research self-efficacy. Students reporting research experiences were confident in their abilities to conduct research overall. Students with two or more experiences reported significantly higher levels of interest in research and research self-efficacy than students who had less or no experience. Qualitative analyses elucidated reasons for the observed differences. The results reinforce the need to expose undergraduate students to research across classes and disciplines and suggest participation in research pools can develop interest and beliefs about research.

Cetaceans are potentially at risk of poor welfare due to the animals’ natural reliance on sound and the persistent nature of anthropogenic noise, especially in the wild. Industrial, commercial, and recreational human activity has expanded across the seas, resulting in a propagation of sound with varying frequency characteristics. In many countries, current regulations are based on the potential to induce hearing loss; however, a more nuanced approach is needed when shaping regulations, due to other non-hearing loss effects including activation of the stress response, acoustic masking, frequency shifts, alterations in behavior, and decreased foraging. Cetaceans in managed-care settings share the same acoustic characteristics as their wild counterparts, but face different environmental parameters. There have been steps to integrate work on welfare in the wild and in managed-care contexts, and the domain of acoustics offers the opportunity to inform and connect information from both managed-care settings and the wild. Studies of subjects in managed-care give controls not available to wild studies, yet because of the conservation implications, wild studies on welfare impacts of the acoustic environment on cetaceans have largely been the focus, rather than those in captive settings. A deep integration of wild and managed-care-based acoustic welfare research can complement discovery in both domains, as captive studies can provide greater experimental control, while the more comprehensive domain of wild noise studies can help determine the gaps in managed-care based acoustic welfare science. We advocate for a new paradigm in anthropogenic noise research, recognizing the value that both wild and managed-care research plays in illustrating how noise pollution affects welfare including physiology, behavior, and cognition.