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.

合作提案：化学生态学的新模型：整合化学、遗传学和行为来了解个体气味在殖民地筑巢海鸟中的作用。

• 批准号: 1258784
• 负责人: Scott Edwards
• 金额: $ 33.4万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-06-15 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1258784&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; New; Model; Chemical

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).

个人气味可以在交流和个人认可中发挥重要作用。 气味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物（MHC）的基因。这项研究将将化学生态学与现代法医科学技术结合，以建立Leach的Storm-Petrel（Oceanodroma Leucorhoa），作为一个模型系统，研究似乎是鸟类中社交互动的关键但很少研究的方面。这是悠久的，burrow-nesting的物种具有极好的气味感，是对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现场研究地点，在那里已经为MHC 2B基因进行了300多对繁殖对。目的是使用为人类气味歧视开发的最先进的化学技术来表征这些基因型鸟类的单个气味谱。特定的研究目标是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）确定鸟类是否使用与MHC相关的气味标记其家居汉堡，c）确定单个鸟类的气味是确定个体质量，健康和健身的指示，还是在MATE选择决策中发挥作用。表明任何种类的鸟类在伴侣选择决策中都使用与MHC相关的气味，将代表生物学家对鸟类中伴侣选择决策的看法的范式转变，并将提供与广泛物种中与鸟类免疫学和健康有关的见解。同样重要的是，许多海心和信天翁正在面临灭绝，了解推动伴侣选择和殖民地人口统计学的因素将为濒危物种的综合管理计划做出宝贵的贡献。已发布的表型/化学或遗传数据将存放在Dryad存储库（http://datadryad.org/）中，或提交给GenBank（http://wwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/），并沉积（http://www.dataone.org/software-tools/merritt-repository-service）。