Individual odour signatures that mice learn are shaped by involatile major urinary proteins (MUPs).

ABSTRACT:

Background

Reliable recognition of individuals requires phenotypic identity signatures that are both individually distinctive and appropriately stable over time. Individual-specific vocalisations or visual patterning are well documented among birds and some mammals, whilst odours play a key role in social recognition across many vertebrates and invertebrates. Less well understood, though, is whether individuals are recognised through variation in cues that arise incidentally from a wide variety of genetic and non-genetic differences between individuals, or whether animals evolve distinctive polymorphic signals to advertise identity reliably. As a bioassay to understand the derivation of individual-specific odour signatures, we use female attraction to the individual odours of male

SUBMITTER: Roberts SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5921788 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature