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The results, published in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, show that Risso's dolphins found around the British Isles are their own genetic entity, suggesting they don't mix much with other Risso's dolphins from farther away and are genetically distinct from the closest populations in the Azores, the Mediterranean and possibly the wider north Atlantic.

"The results support the notion of Risso's dolphins in British waters having been isolated from other populations for some time. However, we did not sample every nearby part of the Atlantic, so it's not yet clear where the boundaries of this unit lie," said co-lead author Nicola Hodgins, from MARA and a visiting researcher at the University of Exeter.

While the study found no significant genetic differences between the animals around different parts of the British Isles, there may still be evidence of "substructuring"—meaning that the dolphins may still live in or return to specific areas around the British Isles, in addition to remaining in specific groups over their lifetime.

Signs of local site fidelity

Recent analysis of Risso's dolphins in Scottish waters found less than 3% matches between individual dolphins photo-identified on the west and northern coasts, implying that Risso's dolphins exhibit a significant level of preference for particular areas. This is particularly important because Risso's dolphin numbers may be decreasing in some regions.

Defining the population's edges

To explore these boundaries and find out whether Risso's dolphins in British waters are truly unique to this area, more genetic samples are needed, with comparisons from nearby regions such as Norway, the Celtic Sea, the southwest English Channel and the Bay of Biscay.

Using more advanced DNA techniques could provide further resolution and give a fine-grained picture of connectedness between groups of Risso's dolphins around the British Isles—key information needed to accurately assess their conservation status.

It could be argued that the population should be recognized as a "subpopulation" by the IUCN—as has been done for the Mediterranean subpopulation, which is classified as Endangered.

Local threats may need local action

Future research combining information on behavior, appearance, movements, vocalizations and genetics will help researchers better understand how Risso's dolphins around the U.K. are connected, how they use different habitats and how best to protect them.

Hodgins said, "Good conservation requires habitat-specific management. While Risso's dolphins are currently managed as a single U.K. population, local populations can face different threats and use habitats in different ways.

"Effective protection must therefore focus on safeguarding important habitats and addressing pressures at a local scale, where conservation measures can have the greatest impact."

The research team included MARA, Nova Atlantis, the Environmental Investigation Agency, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the Zoological Society of London and the universities of Exeter, Glasgow, Zurich, Western Australia and Taiwan.

Samples used in this study were collected by the stranding programs, the Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme (SMASS) and the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Program (CSIP).

More information

Genetic data indicate a lack of population structure of Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus) around the British Isles., Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (2026). DOI: 10.1017/S0025315426101386

Who's behind this story?

Sadie Harley

BSc Life Sciences & Ecology. Microbiology lab background with pharmaceutical news experience in oil, gas, and renewable industries. Full profile →

Robert Egan

Bachelor's in mathematical biology, Master's in creative writing. Well-traveled with unique perspectives on science and language. Full profile →

Citation: Genetic analysis identifies a distinct Risso's dolphin population around British Isles (2026, August 3) retrieved 3 August 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-08-genetic-analysis-distinct-risso-dolphin.html

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Key Facts

In a series of Instagram stories Monday morning, Grande said she “cannot wait to be with” her fans at her Chicago concert, saying she loves them while also posting information about start times and merchandise sales.

Grande’s posts were her first since her representatives told People on Sunday she will take a “step back from visibility” after her tour concludes next month, citing “endless, ongoing public scrutiny.”

Grande’s Chicago concerts, scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, will be her first performances and public appearances since she announced her upcoming hiatus.

Her representatives’ statement did not specify what scrutiny Grande has faced, though some have speculated the statement refers to online discussion about Grande’s apparent weight loss, which has sparked concern among fans, particularly after the release of her new music video for her song “Petal.”

Grande’s Monday morning posts did not address her intention to step back from public life.

Also on Monday morning, Grande reposted Instagram stories made by fans who took videos at her concerts and expressed their love for the singer.

news peg

Grande’s representatives told People on Sunday the singer-actress “looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily, and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny.” The representative said the “tour has been a beautiful experience for her,” adding Grande “loves her fans and has loved every minute of this tour so much.” After People reported Grande’s statement, the official X account for the London revival of “Sunday in the Park With George," in which Grande was set to star, confirmed she dropped out of the production. “We know this cannot have been an easy decision, and she makes it with our complete understanding and support,” the post says.

Why Is Grande Stepping Back From Visibility?

Grande’s representatives did not offer more specifics about the public scrutiny she faces, nor did “Sunday in the Park With George” offer a reason for her departure. But fans and commentators online have speculated the scrutiny Grande referred to has to do with her appearance and apparent weight loss, which has fueled rampant online debate in recent years. Over the weekend, discussion about Grande’s appearance reignited on social media after she released the music video for “Petal.” The top comment on the “Petal” video, liked more than 62,000 times on YouTube, says: “It’s not about wanting the old Ariana back. It’s about wanting her to be healthy.” Some celebrities also expressed concern. Multiple tabloid outlets reported actress Jameela Jamil called Grande’s appearance “dangerous” in an Instagram comment that appears to be deleted, calling out her team for allegedly not intervening. In a post on X, conservative commentator Meghan McCain called Grande’s appearance “very, VERY sad and she clearly needs help immediately.” Grande has previously addressed critics of her appearance and weight, saying in a 2023 TikTok post “we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies no matter what.” Grande said her body from years prior was the “unhealthiest version of my body,” noting she was on antidepressants and drinking alcohol at the time. Other aspects of Grande’s personal life have been frequent subjects of discussion in tabloids and on social media, including her relationship to and breakup from “Wicked” actor Ethan Slater, as well as speculation that her speaking voice has changed.

key background

Grande’s decision to step back from visibility comes days after she released a new album, “Petal,” which critics have said appears to address her dissatisfaction with fame and scrutiny. Some critics have suggested the album’s lead single, “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” may actually be about obsessive fans rather than a lover. Billboard’s critic said the album is “pretty much a manicured middle finger aimed directly at the public,” while Pitchfork noted the album contains lines like, “All that sh-t talk keeps me well-fed.”

further reading

Ariana Grande to Step Away From Public Life After Tour Ends (New York Times) %!s()

The price point at $89 is significantly cheaper than the Meta Ray-Bans that the Anko brand glasses are styled on, which sell from $337.

The Anko glasses run on HeyCyan software, which allows the wearer to play music, answer calls, use an AI assistant, and transfer photos and videos from the device.

The software is used in a range of low-budget camera glasses, from online retailers including Amazon and Temu. Reddit users report that the software is sluggish compared to the software in the Meta Ray-Bans.

Meta has faced significant pushback from privacy advocates since launching the glasses – which some people have dubbed “pervert glasses” – for their ability to record people in public.

Meta’s glasses have a light on to indicate the wearer is recording, but there have been reports of users covertly recording in public, and reports that moderators employed by Meta review intimate footage from the glasses, including of people using the toilet and having sex.

The company last month rolled out an update that disables the camera if the LED light is interfered with, and also reportedly began removing videos from its platform of wearers using the device to harass strangers in public.

New York courts, the US air force and a hacker convention have all reportedly banned people from wearing the glasses.

Meta has said it has sold more than 7m of its glasses worldwide, and has recruited celebrity Kylie Jenner for advertising to push the devices into the mainstream, but the Ray-Bans and the flood of cheap versions of the same technology have concerned privacy advocates.

“Smartglasses with cameras are a privacy nightmare that illustrate how Australian privacy laws haven’t kept up with technology changes,” said Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch.

“We shouldn’t have elevated expectations of personal privacy when out in public, but we should have some.”

Sulston said it was particularly problematic when in the hands of misogynist social media influencers who use the glasses to make content “of them harassing women – typically in places where we have higher expectations of more sensitive use of video cameras, like the beach”.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said the privacy regulator was aware of the community concerns and was monitoring the rollout of the new technology.

“Organisations that collect, use or disclose personal information through products or services are subject to obligations under the act and the Australian Privacy Principles where the act applies,” the spokesperson said.

“People concerned about being photographed or recorded by another individual may also wish to seek independent legal advice about whether other commonwealth, state or territory laws may be relevant in the circumstances.”

A spokesperson for Kmart said the Anko glasses “are part of an established and increasingly mainstream category of wearable technology, with similar products available globally from major technology and eyewear brands”.

“As with any device capable of recording images, we expect customers to use the product responsibly, respectfully and in accordance with applicable laws and community expectations around privacy.”

Sulston said that due to the ongoing privacy issues, including how the collected data may be used by the companies producing the glasses, the social backlash would likely continue.

“The best way to lose friends and alienate people will be to be a public specs offender.”

One reviewer on TechRadar said of the Meta glasses this week that although it is his favourite tech of the year so far, he was afraid to wear them in public due to the growing backlash.

“I haven’t been worried about going around wearing my Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley specs in the past, but with growing public anger over the way smart specs are being misused, I have a genuine concern someone will see me wearing them and act violently towards me,” he said. %!s()

Understanding that connection could reveal how singing affects a whale's energy use, oxygen management and vulnerability to underwater noise and vessel strikes.

A new study by Julia Zeh, a doctoral graduate of Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and member of biology professor Susan Parks' Bioacoustics and Behavioral Ecology Lab, reveals a previously unknown link between the structure of a humpback whale's song and the whale's movement through the water.

Published in Current Biology, the research shows that specific song themes are tied to specific parts of a dive, offering a new window into the biology and evolution of one of the animal kingdom's most elaborate acoustic displays.

Eavesdropping on a whale's playlist

To gather the data, Zeh and her collaborators temporarily attached sound and movement recording tags to singing humpback whales off the coast of Maui as part of a research effort spanning 2018–2024. The noninvasive tags are small suction-cup devices about the size of a tablet. Researchers attached them from small boats using long poles and, more recently, drones.

Once affixed, the tags recorded both the whale's underwater sounds and movement before eventually losing suction and detaching, allowing researchers to retrieve the devices and download the data. In total, the team tagged 16 whales, a substantial sample from a tagging perspective and one selected to be broadly representative of the larger Hawaiian breeding population.

The team was surprised to find that some whales repeated their songs continuously for up to 16 hours without stopping. More importantly, recurring song elements known as themes lined up consistently with specific portions of a dive. While earlier researchers had noticed that certain themes tended to appear as a whale approached the surface, no one had previously connected an entire song structure to an entire dive cycle.

What the songs reveal

The connection between song and depth points to something deeper than coincidence. According to Zeh, themes sung while whales remained at a relatively constant depth during the deepest part of a dive showed different levels of variability than themes sung elsewhere, suggesting those sections may be more strongly shaped by sexual selection. This means they could serve as signals of a male's individual quality.

Themes tied to other parts of the dive, by contrast, may be constrained by physiological or environmental factors, such as the demands of managing oxygen and buoyancy while singing.

"This gives us direction for which parts of the song to investigate if we're interested in variation, which is likely driven by sexual selection," Zeh says, noting that variation concentrated near a whale's deepest points in the water column may be where a male's song is doing the most work to stand out.

The findings also have practical applications. Because acoustic monitoring is already a common tool for tracking whale populations, understanding how song relates to movement could allow researchers to determine a whale's depth or position directly from a recording. That, in turn, could help scientists establish a clearer baseline for normal humpback behavior, an essential reference point for detecting when whales are disturbed by human activity such as vessel traffic or ocean noise.

Whether the same patterns hold for humpback populations outside Hawaii remains an open question. Zeh notes that while she would expect similar physiological constraints to apply broadly, documented differences in song evolution between hemispheres raise the possibility that different populations experience different pressures on song structure. Testing that would mean collecting comparable tag data from singing whales on breeding grounds around the world.

A foundation built in the field

The research reflects years of fieldwork and analysis carried out during Zeh's doctoral studies in Parks' lab at Syracuse, where she focused on the intersection of animal behavior, acoustics and marine biology. Her time in the lab gave her the tools to combine bioacoustic analysis with biologging technology in a way that had not previously been applied to humpback whale song, allowing her to ask new questions about a subject long studied primarily through sound alone.

By reframing whale song through the lens of movement, Zeh's work opens a new avenue for studying how physiology, environment and the social transmission of song interact to shape one of nature's most complex learned behaviors. It also offers a model that researchers can apply not only to future humpback studies, but potentially to the study of complex acoustic communication across species.

"My time at Syracuse changed the way I think about what's possible in this field," Zeh says. "Projects like this one, where we combined acoustics with movement data, gave me the tools to ask exciting questions about whale behavior and the opportunity to be creative in how we look at well-studied phenomena like humpback whale song. These experiences inform how I conduct research and have given me the foundation for my current work in ecological monitoring and conservation."

After completing her doctoral studies at Syracuse University, Zeh completed a postdoctoral appointment with the Passive Acoustics Branch at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She now leads the Archival Passive Acoustic Monitoring Team at the Maine Department of Marine Resources in West Boothbay.

Publication details

Current Biology (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.07.014

Who's behind this story?

Sadie Harley

BSc Life Sciences & Ecology. Microbiology lab background with pharmaceutical news experience in oil, gas, and renewable industries. Full profile →

Robert Egan

Bachelor's in mathematical biology, Master's in creative writing. Well-traveled with unique perspectives on science and language. Full profile →

Citation: Humpback whales match song themes to dive phases, tags reveal (2026, August 3) retrieved 3 August 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-08-humpback-whales-song-themes-phases.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. %!s()