Collaborative Proposal: A New Model For Chemical Ecology: Integrating Chemistry, Genetics and Behavior to Understand the Role of Individual Scent in a Colonial Nesting Seabird.

个人气味在交流和个人识别中发挥着重要作用。气味会受到对免疫功能至关重要的基因的影响，包括主要组织相容性复合体（MHC）的基因。这项研究将化学生态学与现代法医科学技术相结合，建立Leach风暴海燕（Oceanodroma leucorhoa），作为一个模型系统，研究鸟类社会互动的一个关键但很少被研究的方面。这种长寿、穴居的物种嗅觉灵敏，使它们成为这项研究的理想模型。在加拿大新斯科舍省的Bon Portage岛已经建立了广泛的实地研究点，在那里已经对300多对MHC 2B类基因进行了基因分型。目的是利用人类气味辨别的最先进的化学技术来表征这些基因型鸟类的个体气味特征。具体的研究目标是a)测试单个鸟类是否产生与其mhc基因型相关的气味特征，b)确定鸟类是否使用mhc相关的气味标记来标记它们的家洞，以及c)确定单个鸟类的气味是否是个体质量，健康和适应性的指标，或者在配偶选择决策中发挥作用。任何一种鸟类在择偶决策中都使用mhc相关的气味，这表明生物学家对鸟类择偶决策的看法发生了范式转变，并将为鸟类免疫学和广泛物种的健康提供相关见解。同样重要的是，许多海燕和信天翁物种正面临灭绝，了解推动配偶选择和种群人口统计的因素将为濒危物种的综合管理计划做出有价值的贡献。已发表的表型/化学或遗传数据将存入Dryad Repository （http://datadryad.org/）或提交到Genbank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/)，并存入Merritt data Repository （http://www.dataone.org/software-tools/merritt-repository-service）。

Personal odors can play an essential role in communication and individual recognition. Scents make be influenced by genes that are critical for immune function, including genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). This study will marry chemical ecology with modern forensic science techniques establishing the Leach's storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa), as a model system studying what appears to be a critical but little studied aspect of social interactions in birds.This long-lived, burrow-nesting species has an excellent sense of smell, making them an ideal model for this investigation. Extensive field study sites have already been established on Bon Portage Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, where over 300 breeding pairs have been genotyped for the MHC class 2B gene. The aim is to characterize the individual odor profiles of these genotyped birds using state-of-the-art chemical techniques developed for human scent discrimination. Specific research objectives are a) to test whether individual birds produce odor signatures related to their MHC-genotype, b) to determine if birds use MHC-related scent marks to label their home burrows, and c) to determine whether the scent of an individual bird is an indicator of individual quality, health and fitness, or plays a role in mate choice decisions. Showing that any species of bird uses MHC-related odors in mate choice decisions would represent a paradigm shift in how biologists think about mate choice decisions in birds, and will provide insights relevant to avian immunology and health in a wide-ranging species. Just as importantly, many species of petrels and albatrosses are facing extinction, and understanding the factors driving mate choice and colony demographics will make a valuable contribution to comprehensive management plans for endangered species. Published phenotypic/chemical or genetic data will be deposited in the Dryad Repository (http://datadryad.org/) or submitted to Genbank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/), and deposited in Merritt Data Repository (http://www.dataone.org/software-tools/merritt-repository-service).