Chemical fingerprints encode mother–offspring similarity, colony membership, relatedness, and genetic quality in fur seals
Understanding olfactory communication in natural vertebrate populations requires knowledge of how genes and the environment influence highly complex individual chemical fingerprints. To understand how relevant information is chemically encoded and may feed into mother–offspring recognition, we there...
| Published in: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
National Academy of Sciences
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4568685/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26261311 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1506076112 |
| Summary: | Understanding olfactory communication in natural vertebrate populations requires knowledge of how genes and the environment influence highly complex individual chemical fingerprints. To understand how relevant information is chemically encoded and may feed into mother–offspring recognition, we therefore generated chemical and genetic data for Antarctic fur seal mother–pup pairs. We show that pups are chemically highly similar to their mothers, reflecting a combination of genetic and environmental influences. We also reveal associations between chemical fingerprints and both genetic quality and relatedness, the former correlating positively with substance diversity and the latter encoded mainly by a small subset of substances. Dissecting apart chemical fingerprints to reveal subsets of potential biological relevance has broad implications for understanding vertebrate chemical communication. |
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