ENDANGERED SPECIES RESEARCH Endang Species Res Vol. 30: 157–169, 2016 doi: 10.3354/esr00735 Published May 31 INTRODUCTION The North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis is one of the most closely studied mysticete whales in the world (Kraus et al. 2005). Due to its endangered status and slow population recovery rate (Caswell et al. 1999), there has been great interest in tracking the population and distribution of these whales within their coastal habitats to assist in the implementation of suitable management strategies that minimize the risk of vessel collisions or entanglement in fishing gear (Kraus et al. 2005). Several methods have been used to monitor this species, including traditional visual vessel and aerial surveys as well as marine passive acoustic monitor- ing (PAM) (Brown et al. 2007, Van Parijs et al. 2009). PAM utilizes recorded acoustic data from either manned recorders, such as a hydrophone towed be- hind a vessel, or unmanned, autonomous recorders (Zimmer 2011, Sousa-Lima et al. 2013). From a methodological standpoint, autonomous recorders are particularly useful in the marine environment as they allow continuous, long-term monitoring regard- less of light or weather conditions (Mellinger et al. 2007b, Au & Hastings 2010). PAM can be used to detect vocalizations and provide insight into seasonal habitat use and movement patterns, making it an excellent tool for remote monitoring of vocal endan- © The authors 2016. Open Access under Creative Commons by Attribution Licence. Use, distribution and reproduction are un- restricted. Authors and original publication must be credited. Publisher: Inter-Research · www.int-res.com *Corresponding author: jamccord@syr.edu Calls of North Atlantic right whales Eubalaena glacialis contain information on individual identity and age class Jessica A. McCordic * , Holly Root-Gutteridge, Dana A. Cusano, Samuel L. Denes, Susan E. Parks Department of Biology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA ABSTRACT: Passive acoustic monitoring is a powerful tool that allows remote detection of marine mammals through their vocalizations. While call detection provides information on species pres- ence, additional information may be contained within the vocalizations that could provide more information regarding the demographics and/or number of individuals in a particular area based on passive acoustic detections. The North Atlantic right whale Eubalaena glacialis produces a stereotyped upswept call, termed the upcall, that is thought to function as a long-distance contact call in this species. As such, the call is likely to contain cues providing information about the indi- vidual producing it. The goal of this study was to test whether the right whale upcall could poten- tially encode information related to the identity and age of the caller. Using upcalls recorded from 14 known individuals through non-invasive suction cup archival acoustic tags, we demonstrate that the upcall does contain sufficient information to discriminate individual identity and age class, with average classification levels of 72.6 and 86.1%, respectively. Parameters measured from the fundamental frequency, duration, and formant structure were most important for dis- crimination among individuals. This study is the first step in demonstrating the feasibility of obtaining additional data from passive acoustic monitoring to aid in the conservation efforts for this highly endangered species. KEY WORDS: Right whale · Acoustic communication · Vocal signature · Individual recognition · Passive acoustic monitoring · Formants OPEN PEN ACCESS CCESS