Exploring the Development of Olfactory Sensitivity in a Procellariiform Seabird

Procellariiform海鸟（海燕，信天翁和海鸥）使他们的生活在广阔的开阔的海洋觅食狩猎零星分布的猎物，如鱼类，鱿鱼和磷虾。 它们成功的秘诀是通过气味定位猎物的能力。 在过去的十年里，在了解南极物种的嗅觉觅食方面取得了很大进展，无论是在大（100英里）还是小（10英里）尺度上。首席研究员（PI）的嗅觉觅食研究广泛采用综合方法，扩大了海鸟如何用鼻子“看”世界的图景，从而增强了领先科学家的早期工作。现在出现了许多问题。例如，小鸡的嗅觉觅食行为是如何发展的？当其他远洋海鸟花几个月的时间教后代如何以及在哪里觅食时，原细胞形海鸟的雏鸟在父母分散后的几周内就能在公海上羽化并生存下来。这些鸟似乎孵化知道如何和在哪里觅食，没有父母的帮助或指导。这怎么可能呢？从大气化学和发育神经生物学等不同学科中汲取经验，该提案探讨了一个假设，即在发育过程中，小鸡通过暴露于父母的气味中来适应觅食中使用的气味。这种预先调整或“印记”提供鸟类的嗅觉景观，他们将遇到羽翼未丰后，信息，特别是，为他们提供线索觅食可能是productive.This建议调查的发展嗅觉灵敏度的利奇风暴海燕（Oceanodroma leucorhoa）。有两个主要目标。首先，雏鸡对三种猎物相关气味（DMS -浮游生物气味、吡嗪-磷虾气味和三甲胺-鱼气味）和一种对照气味（苯乙醇-玫瑰气味）的行为反应将被表征。第二个目标将确定小鸡是否通过在蛋阶段预先暴露于与猎物无关的气味中来学习气味线索，然后测试这种早期暴露是否会增加以后生活中对这种气味的敏感性。除了她的海鸟工作，PI一直在开发新的和高度综合的方法来研究鲑鱼印迹的关键球员，因此将这些想法扩展到鸟类是她的工作的一个合乎逻辑的进展。总的来说，这些结果将大大扩展我们对这些迷人鸟类的感官生物学的了解。这些知识不仅对基础科学有用，而且还可能有助于加强努力，确保保护许多物种的受威胁或濒危状态。此外，通过在大学赞助的实地实验室建立一个研究地点，将更容易促进学生参与这项工作。相对于偏远的亚南极地区，几乎所有的PI以前的工作已经进行，肯特岛（新玩法，加拿大）是容易和经济的访问。该地点还提供了访问实验室设施（通常不提供在孤岛上，其中procellariiforms繁殖）和来自世界各地的合作者，以及指导该领域的研究生和本科生的能力。

Procellariiform seabirds (the petrels, albatrosses and shearwaters) make their living foraging over vast expanses of open ocean hunting patchily distributed prey such as fish, squid and krill. The secret to their success is an ability to locate prey by smell. Over the past decade, much headway has been made in understanding olfactory foraging of Antarctic species, both at large (100s of miles) and small (10 miles) scales. Augmenting early work by leading scientists, the Principal Investigator's (PI) broadly integrative approach to studying olfactory foraging has expanded the picture of how seabirds "see" the world with their noses.Now many questions arise. For example, how do olfactory foraging behaviors develop in chicks? While other pelagic seabirds spend months teaching offspring how and where to forage, procellariiform chicks fledge and survive the open seas weeks after their parents have dispersed. These birds appear to hatch knowing how and where to forage without aid or instruction from a parent. How is this possible? Drawing from disciplines as diverse as atmospheric chemistry and developmental neurobiology, this proposal explores the hypothesis that, during development, chicks become tuned to odors used in foraging by being exposed to them by their parents. This pre-tuning or "imprinting" provides birds with information about the olfactory landscape they will encounter after fledging, and, specifically, offers them clues about where foraging is likely to be productive.This proposal investigates the development of olfactory sensitivity in the Leach's storm petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa). There are two primary objectives. First, chicks' behavioral responses to three prey-related odors (DMS - plankton scent, pyrazine - krill scent, and trimethyl amine - fish scent) and to one control odor (phenyl ethyl alcohol - rose scent) will be characterized. The second objective will determine whether chicks learn odor cues by pre-exposing chicks to a non-prey related odor during the egg stage, and then testing whether this early exposure increases sensitivity to that odor later in life.Results from the proposed research will be among the first to address the development of olfaction in an ecologically important context. In addition to her seabird work, the PI has been a key player in developing new and highly integrative approaches to studying salmon imprinting, so extending these ideas to birds is a logical progression of her work. Overall, the results will greatly extend our knowledge of the sensory biology of these fascinating birds. Such knowledge not only is useful to basic science, but also may help bolster efforts to ensure the conservation of procellariiforms, given the threatened or endangered status of many species. Moreover, by establishing a study site at a University-sponsored field laboratory, student involvement in the work will be much more easily fostered. Relative to the remote sub-Antarctic, where virtually all of the PI's previous work has been conducted, Kent Island (New Brunswick, Canada) is easily and economically accessible. The location also provides access to lab facilities (not typically available on isolated islands where procellariiforms breed) and collaborators from around the world, as well as the ability to mentor graduate and undergraduate students in the field.