Chemical and ethological characterization of volatiles implicated in behavioural responses of songbird hatchlings to their parents’ scent

越来越多的证据表明，嗅觉在鸣禽的社会行为中发挥着迄今被忽视的作用，包括父母与后代的互动。在斑马雀身上，Caspers和他的同事(2017)发现，与来自陌生成鸟的气味相比，刚孵化出来的幼鸟在父母气味的刺激下乞讨的时间更长，这表明雏鸟从孵化开始就能识别父母的气味。最近的初步研究得出结论，斑马雀幼鸟不仅对父母的气味表现出乞讨行为，而且对任何成年繁殖的斑马雀的体味化合物也表现出乞讨行为。然而，目前还不清楚是哪种化学信息导致了雏鸟典型的乞讨行为。在拟议的项目中，我们的目标是识别和表征这些具有行为活性的化合物。

There is increasing evidence that olfaction plays a hitherto neglected role in the social behaviour of songbirds, including parent-offspring interaction. In zebra finches, Caspers and colleagues (2017) found out that freshly hatched chicks beg longer when stimulated with their parental odour compared with the odour from an unfamiliar adult, indicating that chicks recognise their parents’ scent from hatching on. Recent pilot studies led to the conclusion that zebra finch chicks do not only evince a begging behaviour to the parental scent, but also to specific compounds of the body odour of any adult breeding zebra finch. It still remains unknown, however, which kind of chemical information elicits the chicks’ stereotypical begging behaviour. In the proposed project, we aim to identify and characterize these behaviourally active compounds.