Can house sparrows recognize familiar or kin-related individuals by scent?

Abstract

In the last decades, higher attention has been paid to olfactory perception in birds. As a consequence, a handful of avian species have been discovered to use olfaction in different contexts. Nevertheless, we still have a very limited knowledge about the use of odor cues in avian social life, particularly, in the case of songbirds. Here, we investigate if female house sparrows Passer domesticus show any preference for the odor of kin and nonkin conspecifics and we also test a possible role of familiarity based on male scent in female choice. We performed the experiment with captive birds twice, during the nonbreeding and breeding seasons. Our results show that female house sparrows strongly avoided the odor of unrelated familiar (UF) males, both in the breeding and nonbreeding seasons. Our results suggest recognition for olfactory stimuli related to familiarity and kinship. We suggest that avoidance for UF males is associated with previous experience in this species. Also, we provided further evidence to the use of olfaction in passerine species by using a new experimental setup.

Keywords: familiarity; house sparrow; kinship recognition; odor; olfaction, Passer domesticus.

Figure 1.

Proportion of time females (n = 12) spent in front of the body odor of a RF, UF, UU male and of a control. Both breeding and nonbreeding season are included (see Table 3 for the statistical analysis). Only time in the choice area was considered. Females showed a significant rejection for the odor cue of UF males. **P < 0.01. Error bars indicate ± SE.