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First published online September 9, 2003

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The Journal of Experimental Biology 206, 3719-3722 (2003)
doi: 10.1242/jeb.00610

Evidence for nest-odour recognition in two species of diving petrel

Francesco Bonadonna^1,*, Gregory B. Cunningham², Pierre Jouventin¹, Florence Hesters¹ and Gabrielle A. Nevitt²

¹ Behavioural Ecology Group, Centre d'Ecologie fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS, F-34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France
² Center for Animal Behavior and the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behaviour, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: bonadonna{at}cefe.cnrs-mop.fr)

Accepted 17 July 2003

In nearly every procellariiform species, the sense of smell appears to be highly adapted for foraging at sea, but the sense of smell among the diving petrels is enigmatic. These birds forage at considerable depth and are not attracted to odour cues at sea. However, several procellariiform species have recently been shown to relocate their nesting burrows by scent, suggesting that these birds use an olfactory signature to identify the home burrow. We wanted to know whether diving petrels use smell in this way. We tested the common diving petrel Pelecanoides urinatrix and the South-Georgian diving petrel Pelecanoides georgicus to determine whether diving petrels were able to recognise their burrow by scent alone. To verify the efficacy of the method, we also tested a bird that is known to use olfaction for foraging and nest recognition, the thin-billed prion Pachyptila belcheri. In two-choice T-maze trials, we found that, for all species, individuals significantly preferred the odour of their own nest material to that of a conspecific. Our findings strongly suggest that an individual-specific odour provides an olfactory signature that allows burrowing petrels to recognize their own burrow. Since this ability seems to be well developed in diving petrels, our data further implicate a novel adaptation for olfaction in these two species that have been presumed to lack a well-developed sense of smell.

Key words: homing, orientation, olfaction, petrel, Pelecanoides urinatrix, Pelecanoides georgicus, olfactory recognition, Kerguelen archipelago

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