Search

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Exploratory behaviour is one of the best-investigated behavioural traits. However, little is known about how differences in familiarity, i.e. in the knowledge and previous experience with a companion can influence the exploration of a novel environment. However, to our knowledge, such a critical feature of the social environment has never been the target of a study relating it to exploratory behaviour in birds. Here we examined if familiarity with a conspecific could affect behavioural responses of individuals confronted with a novel environment. We recorded the latency to land on the ground, latency to feed, time spent feeding and number of sectors visited of 48 female and 48 male house sparrows (Passer domesticus) in an indoor aviary in three contexts: alone (individual context), with an unfamiliar and with a familiar same-sex companion. Results: House sparrows landed sooner on the ground when in the familiar context than when in the individual context. Birds in unfamiliar pairs followed each other less than familiar birds, but this difference diminished with time spent exploring. Moreover, males and females differed in their behavioural responses in the unfamiliar context. Females with a familiar companion landed sooner than when they were paired with an unfamiliar conspecific, whereas only the presence of a companion but not familiarity reduced males latency to land on the ground. Finally, when considering the unfamiliar context males had shorter latencies to forage and thus spent more time eating than females. Conclusions: The presence or absence of a companion and its familiarity with the focal individual influenced differently the behavioural responses of male and female house sparrows in a novel environment. As house sparrows are strongly sociable, the influence of the social environment is likely to be of paramount importance to understand the selective pressures acting on them, particularly in recently colonized areas with ephemeral food sources. Our results shed light on the complex influence that the social environment has on the behavioural responses of a cosmopolitan bird. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]