LETTER TO THE EDITOR Comments on Recent Work by Zhang and Colleagues: ‘‘Uropygial Gland- Secreted Alkanols Contribute to Olfactory Sex Signals in Budgerigars’’

Comments on recent work by Zhang and colleagues: "Uropygial gland-secreted alkanols contribute to olfactory sex signals in budgerigars".

Comments on Recent Work by Zhang and Colleagues: ‘‘Uropygial GlandSecreted Alkanols Contribute to Olfactory Sex Signals in Budgerigars’’ Jérôme Mardon, Sandra M. Saunders and Francesco Bonadonna Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Population Biology, Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CEFE-CNRS UMR 5175), 1919 route de Mende, 34293 M...

Uropygial gland-secreted alkanols contribute to olfactory sex signals in budgerigars.

The possible role of uropygial gland-secreted compounds in olfactory discrimination of sex or sex attractants in the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus, was investigated using behavioral 2-choice tests and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis. Our data showed that female budgerigars were capable of distinguishing males from females in a Y maze via body odor, indicating its sexual dimo...

Preen Gland-Secreted Alkanols Enhance Male Attractiveness in Parrots

Chemical communication is widely used throughout the animal world including birds (1-3). The skin glands of vertebrates can release chemical signals such as sex pheromones attracting the opposite sex for breeding (1,2,4). But, the uropygial (also called preen or oil) glands of birds have no sex pheromones characterized (2,3,5). Here, we show that females of the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulat...

LETTER TO THE EDITOR An Approach to Search for Putative Pheromones in Birds via Chemical Analysis—A Reply to Mardon J, Saunders SM, and Bonadonna F

Our work on the positive identification of male pheromones of budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) was recently published as a peer-reviewed paper in Chemical Senses journal, where the combination of chemical and behavioral assays ‘‘robustly demonstrates that a blend of 3 long-chain alkanols synergistically acts as a male pheromone in budgerigars’’ (Zhang et al. 2010). Such a claim was questio...

Comment to the Letter to the Editor: Subjective Symptoms Related to GSM Radiation from Mobile Phone Base Stations: a cross-sectional study In reply to the comments by Seyed Mohammad Javad Mortazavi