Meeting Abstract
Although initially thought to be unimportant, in recent years, use of olfaction by some avian species has been well established for many activities such as foraging, mating and navigation. Furthermore, some bird species are able to recognize other birds by odor. Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) are known to use olfaction for foraging while closely related black vultures (Coragyps atratus) are not thought to forage using olfaction though they have relatively large olfactory bulbs. However, black vultures are considered more social than turkey vultures, suggesting that black vultures may use olfaction to detect social cues. If so, we would expect black vultures to exhibit high levels of individual variability in putative social cues, and/or clear differences between males and females. If turkey vulture olfaction is primarily for foraging, we might expect turkey vultures to exhibit little individual variation and/or sex differences. We analyzed extracts representing uropygial gland (UG) secretions and feathers, both hypothesized to exhibit social odor cues in other bird species, using GCMS to identify the chemical make-up of these social odor cues. Our results indicate that robust differences in chemical make-up exist between feather and UG sources. No chemicals unique to one species or sex were found and chemicals overlapped to a large extent at this level of analysis; however, ordination analysis revealed a reduced, although detectable difference in chemical make-up between both species and sex. Additionally, chemical signatures appear to be highly variable among individuals in both species which may impart odor fingerprints that could potentially be used for individual recognition.
