Meeting Abstract
Aquatic habitats tend to be highly complex sensory environments with little to no light but are oftentimes rich in terms of dissolved compounds. Reliance on chemoreception can be particularly advantageous in these environments as chemical cues provide animals information about their surroundings. For aquatic species, olfactory cues play a critical role in mediating a range of behaviors such as kin recognition, avoidance of predators and homing. Pacific salmon exhibit natal homing, where adults return to their natal tributaries in freshwater to spawn. These migrations are remarkable in terms of both the spatial and temporal scales over which these movements occur, with adults travelling thousands of kilometers to their natal tributaries after a period of several years at sea. We know that imprinting of odors occurs at critical developmental periods and this may be the mechanism through which juveniles learn odors associated with their home streams. While salmon are able to detect several classes of compounds, odors that serve as olfactory cues during navigation remain unidentified. We conducted a series of behavioral choice assays using juveniles to evaluate the effectiveness of candidate odorants for imprinting within hatcheries. By improving olfactory imprinting and homing success of hatchery fish, we may be able to minimize interactions between hatchery and wild salmonid populations.
