Chemosensory recognition of olfactory individuality.

Body odors regulate social, sexual and endocrine responses of many species. Specialized structures have evolved to produce and detect odorous signals. Individual identity, often communicated through body odor, can be critical in mate choice, incest avoidance, parental care and other inter-individual interactions. Because of the importance of individual identity, particularly among social species, we have focused our research program on understanding how odors code for individuality and in what contexts individual signals modulate social behavior. In particular, we have been investigating how one set of genes, those of the MHC (see below), are involved in producing an animal’s self odor.