Scent brings all the songbirds to the yard

AUGUST 12, 2019

by Lehigh University

"The sense of smell has been very understudied in birds, particularly songbirds, because they frequently have such impressive plumage and song variation," says Amber Rice, an evolutionary biologist at Lehigh University. "Some other recent work has documented that species of songbird can smell and prefer their species' odors, but this is the first example in currently hybridizing species that we know of." Credit: Lehigh University

Chickadees can smell! That is the news from a study out of Lehigh University, the first to document naturally hybridizing songbirds' preference for the scent of their own species.

Amber Rice, an evolutionary biologist at Lehigh, studies natural hybridization-when separate species come into contact and mate-to better understand how species originate and how existing species are maintained. The two species that make up the hybridized population she studies are the black-capped chickadee and its relative the Carolina chickadee.

Rice and Ph.D. student, Alex Van Huynh, set out to test the potential for scent to act as a mate choice cue, contributing to reproductive isolation between the black-capped and Carolina chickadees who live in the "hybrid zone" in the eastern Pennsylvania region where Lehigh is located.

Huynh and Rice found that both black-capped and Carolina chickadees produce chemically distinct natural oils. Testing both males and females of both chickadee species, they found that males and females prefer the smell of their own species over the smell of the opposite species. These preferences could be impacting hybridization. Their results have been published in an article entitled: "Conspecific olfactory preferences and interspecific divergence in odor cues in a chickadee hybrid zone" in Ecology and Evolution.

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New $12 million Te Papa exhibit showcases the scent of native birds

TUE, MAY 7

A new $12 million exhibit is set to open at Te Papa in Wellington which will feature more than 1000 items from New Zealand’s natural world.

Te Taiao Nature will showcase the scents from some of New Zealand's native birds including the Kiwi, kakapo and petrel.

Te Papa Curator Colin Miskelly says the idea behind the exhibition was to help better understand the reasons why our native birds smell the way they do.

"Part of the reason that we think that New Zealand birds are quite smelly compared with birds in other parts of the world, is that there were not ground dwelling mammals hunting by scent in New Zealand, so there was no downside to them being a bit smelly," says Mr Miskelly.

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Plankton make scents for seabirds and a cooler planet

Date:

March 20, 2014

Source:

University of California, Davis

Summary:

The top predators of the Southern Ocean, far-ranging seabirds, are tied both to the health of the ocean ecosystem and to global climate regulation through a mutual relationship with phytoplankton, according to newly published work from the University of California, Davis.

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Birds Choose Sweet-Smelling Mates

Sep. 3, 2013 — For most animals, scent is the instant messenger of choice for quickly exchanging personal profiles. Scientists, however, have long dismissed birds as odor-eschewing Luddites that don't take advantage of scent-based communications.

In a first-of-its-kind study, however, a Michigan State University researcher has demonstrated that birds do indeed communicate via scents, and that odor reliably predicts their reproductive success. The study appears in the current issue of Animal Behaviour and focuses on volatile compounds in avian preen secretions.

Birds' preen glands are located near their tails. Using their beaks, birds extract oil from the glands and rub it on their feathers and legs. Historically, this activity was thought to simply bolster the strength of feathers. Danielle Whittaker, managing director of MSU's BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, and her research team, however, have shown that it plays a key role in signaling reproductive health.

"This study shows a strong connection between the way birds smell near the beginning of the breeding season -- when birds are choosing mates -- and their reproductive success for the entire season," she said. "Simply put, males that smell more 'male-like' and females that smell more 'female-like' have higher genetic reproductive success."

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