The Olfactory Landscape Concept: A Key Source of Past, Present, and Future Information Driving Animal Movement and Decision-making

Finnerty, Patrick B.; McArthur, Clare; Banks, Peter B.; Price, Catherine J.; Shrader, Adrian M.

doi:10.1093/biosci/biac039

Cited by 21 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 113 publications

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“…Plant species vary not only in their abundance, but also in their nutritional quality, and both of these factors can vary across a seasonal cycle [21,50,51]. Thus, for herbivorous mammals, olfaction can be a useful tool to locate and assess variable resources [33,37,[52][53][54][55][56][57]. For example, reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) were able to distinguish good and poor lichen sources via olfactory cues below 90 cm of snow [43], and savanna elephants can detect differences in sugar content of fruits from marula trees, Sclerocarya birra [34].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for ancestral olfactory sensitivity but not discrimination across two living elephant species

Schmitt¹,

Rudolph²,

Jacobson³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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While African savanna and Asian elephants split between 4.2-9 MYA, they are often regarded as one united group, ‘elephants,’ even in the scientific literature. This is concerning, as while both are keystone species in their respective habitats, each face different environmental pressures and have rarely been compared experimentally. Savanna elephants must locate resources that vary spatially and temporally across patchy savannas, while Asian elephants do so within dense forests containing high biodiversity. Both species use olfaction to guide decision-making, however, considering their ecologies, we hypothesize that their olfactory abilities differ. Thus, we investigated the sensitivity and detection limits of both savanna and Asian elephants’ olfactory systems, as well as changes in these limits in a complex odour environment using two odour-based choice experiments. While both species correctly detected a target odour – savanna elephants detected it at 50 parts per million (ppm) and Asian elephants at 100 ppm – only the savanna elephants’ limit changed (to 1,000 ppm) in the complex odour environment. Our findings suggest that these species have similar olfactory sensitivity, which probably evolved in a shared ancestor, but divergent olfactory discrimination abilities, which are likely a result of variation in both the density and species diversity of their habitats.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for ancestral olfactory sensitivity but not discrimination across two living elephant species

Schmitt¹,

Rudolph²,

Jacobson³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…From the studies noted in this review, we must revise this perspective to include that sensory neurons in the peripheral nervous system of future generations are also affected by parental experiences. Alterations in sensory acuity are not only the hallmark of a variety of health conditions in humans like allergies, neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and neuropsychiatric disorders ( Ashwin et al 2014 ; Dibattista et al 2020 ; Lyons-Warren et al 2021 ; Stankovic et al 2021 ; Walker et al 2021 ; Novaleski et al 2023 ) but also influence phenomena like odor recognition, mate choice and foraging decisions in non-human animal species ( Fleischmann et al 2008 ; Glinka et al 2012 ; Kavaliers and Choleris 2017 ; Van Huynh and Rice 2019 ; Finnerty et al 2022 ; McLachlan et al 2022 ; Zjacic and Scholz 2022 ). Therefore, the revision that sensory neurons bear influences of parental experiences presents two opportunities for future study.…”

Section: Expanding Our Understanding Of Cause and Consequence Of Lega...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Legacies of salient environmental experiences—insights from chemosensation

Dias

2024

Chemical Senses

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Evidence for parental environments profoundly influencing the physiology, biology and neurobiology of future generations has been accumulating in the literature. Recent efforts to understand this phenomenon and its underlying mechanisms have sought to use species like rodents and insects to model multi-generational legacies of parental experiences like stress and nutritional exposures. From these studies, we have come to appreciate that parental exposure to salient environmental experiences impact the cadence of brain development, hormonal responses to stress, and the expression of genes that govern cellular responses to stress, in offspring. Recent studies using chemosensory exposure have emerged as a powerful tool to shed new light on how future generations come to be influenced by environments to which parents are exposed. With a specific focus on studies that have leveraged such use of salient chemosensory experiences, this review synthesizes our current understanding of the concept, causes and consequences of the inheritance of chemosensory legacies by future generations and how this field of inquiry informs the larger picture of how parental experiences can influence offspring biology.

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“…Post-ingestive feedback consists of the physiological effects following the consumption of different foods, which, in the case of foods with excessive amounts of PSMs, includes nausea and malaise (a general feeling of unwellness; Provenza 1995 ). Pre-ingestive cues consist of plants’ visual, gustatory, and olfactory characteristics that mammalian herbivores detect as they move across the landscape (see olfactory landscape; Finnerty et al 2022 ) and utilise to differentiate between food items (Iason 2005 ; Lev-Yadun and Gould 2007 ; Kohl and Dearing 2011 ; Stutz et al 2017 ). In particular, plant odour has been demonstrated to be a crucial pre-ingestive cue for some mammalian herbivores (e.g., Bedoya-Pérez et al 2014 ; Stutz et al 2017 ; Schmitt et al 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The deterrent effects of individual monoterpene odours on the dietary decisions of African elephants

2023

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African savanna elephants use pre-ingestive olfactory cues when making dietary choices, and previous research has observed that elephant diet choice is negatively correlated with vegetation species that contain high concentrations of monoterpenes. However, the frequency and concentration of monoterpenes can vary dramatically across plant species. Thus, we aimed to explore the effects that the odours of individual monoterpenes have on elephant diet choice and how these effects vary with concentration. To do this, we conducted three odour-based choice experiments focusing on eight common monoterpenes found in the woody plants in Southern African savannas. In the first experiment, we tested whether elephant diet choice for a frequently consumed plant (Euclea crispa) was influenced by the addition of the odour of an individual monoterpene at a set concentration. In the second experiment, we explored the relative deterrence of each monoterpene. Lastly, we tested how elephant diet choice varied as a function of the addition of individual monoterpene odours at 5%, 10%, and 20% concentrations. We found that the elephants avoided most individual monoterpenes at high concentrations, with the exception being α-pinene. Furthermore, we found that the odours of some individual monoterpenes were, in fact, more deterrent than others. In the third experiment, we found that the elephants avoided β-pinene, limonene, ocimene, γ-terpinene, and terpinolene across all concentrations, but only avoided sabinene and linalool at high concentrations. Ultimately, our results show that the odour of individual monoterpenes may deter elephant consumption, but that this deterrent effect depends on both the monoterpene and its concentration.

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The Olfactory Landscape Concept: A Key Source of Past, Present, and Future Information Driving Animal Movement and Decision-making

Cited by 21 publications

References 113 publications

Evidence for ancestral olfactory sensitivity but not discrimination across two living elephant species

Evidence for ancestral olfactory sensitivity but not discrimination across two living elephant species

Legacies of salient environmental experiences—insights from chemosensation

The deterrent effects of individual monoterpene odours on the dietary decisions of African elephants

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