The African termiteraiding ant Pachycondyla analis Latreille (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) organizes group raids on termites of the subfamily Macrotermitinae. Termites and ants occupy and share similar habitats, resulting in a co-evolutionary arms race between termites as prey and ants as predators. The present study explored whether P. analis uses semio- chemical signaling cues to detect potential...

Olfaction plays many well-established roles in vertebrate sensory perception [1, 2]. More controversial is the claim that olfactory cues underlie the large-scale geographic "map" sense used by birds and other vertebrates [3, 4]. The most common procedure used to investigate the role of odors in avian homing is to experimentally produce anosmia and/or block access to natural odors [4, 5]. Althou...

Odor stimuli play a major role in perception of food flavor. Food-related odors have also been shown to increase rated appetite, and induce salivation and release of gastric acid and insulin. However, our ability to identify an odor as food-related, and our liking for food-related odors, are both learned responses. In conditioning studies, repeated experience of odors with sweet and sour tastes...

Infections have been shown to alter body odor. Because immune activation accompanies both infection and immunization, we tested the hypothesis that classical immunization might similarly result in the alteration of body odors detectable by trained biosensor mice. Using a Y-maze, we trained biosensor mice to distinguish between urine odors from rabies-vaccinated (RV) and unvaccinated control mic...

Animals can be innately attracted to certain odorants. Because these attractants are particularly salient, they might be expected to induce relatively strong responses throughout the olfactory pathway, helping animals detect the most relevant odors but limiting flexibility to respond to other odors. Alternatively, specific neural wiring might link innately preferred odors to appropriate behavio...

Sniffing is one-way animals collect chemical signals, and many males self-groom when they encounter the odor of opposite-sex conspecifics. We tested the hypothesis that sexual chemical signals from females can induce self-grooming behavior in male root voles (Microtus oeconomus Pallas). Specifically, we investigated the sniffing pattern of male root voles in response to odors from the head, tru...

Vertebrate olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) transduce odor stimuli into electrical signals by means of an adenylyl cyclase/cAMP second messenger cascade, but it remains widely debated whether this cAMP cascade mediates transduction for all odorants or only certain odor classes. To address this problem, we have analyzed the generator currents induced by odors that failed to produce cAMP in prev...

Aiming to unravel how animals perceive odors, a variety of neurophysiological techniques are used today. For olfactory stimulation, odors are commonly incorporated into a constant airstream that carries odor molecules to the receptor organ (air-delivered stimulation). Such odor delivery works well for odors of high volatility (naturally effective over long distances) but less or not at all for ...

odor emission is a common environmental problem in septic tank. the feasibility of using trickling filter to eliminate the malodorous gases from the septic tank was studied. a trickling filter is set up at the outlet of the waste gases of the septic tank, which was attached to the university's cafeteria. in this investigation, the trickling filter system was used, measuring the hydrogen sulfide...

Queenless groups of honey bee workers (Apis mellifera L.) respond with typical increases in their metabolic activity when exposed to queens. Volatile queen odors release 46.8% of the reaction in worker groups compared to combinations of volatile odors and non-volatile factors. Worker groups which were allowed to learn the odor of a given queen were able to discriminate between volatile odors of...