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A comparison of the olfactory abilities of three species of procellariiform chicks

Gregory B. Cunningham^1,*, Richard W. Van Buskirk¹, Francesco Bonadonna², Henri Weimerskirch² and Gabrielle A. Nevitt¹

¹ Center for Animal Behavior and the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behaviour, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California, 95616, USA
² Centre d`Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, F-79360 Villiers en Bois, France

View larger version (33K): [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Experimental set-up showing odour presentation to a sleeping Blue petrel chick. Note the position of the light bulb (1) and squeeze bottle (2). We use the term `sleeping' following the convention of Porter et al. (1999); it may be that birds were not technically sleeping.

View larger version (11K): [in a new window]   Fig. 2. Mean scores for blue petrel responses to control (black), DMS (dimethyl sulphide; white) and PEA (phenyl ethyl alcohol; gray) odourant presentations. Single and double asterisks indicate significant differences (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, *P<0.05; **P<0.01; N=30) between the response to an odourant and the distilled water control.

View larger version (9K): [in a new window]   Fig. 3. Mean scores for thin-billed prion responses to control (black), DMS (dimethyl sulphide; white) and PEA (phenyl ethyl alcohol; gray) odourant presentations. Single asterisks indicate significant differences (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, P<0.05; N=12) between the response to an odourant and the distilled water control.

View larger version (10K): [in a new window]   Fig. 4. Mean scores for common diving petrel responses to control (black), DMS (dimethyl sulphide; white) and PEA (phenyl ethyl alcohol; gray) odourant presentations. No significant difference (see text) between the response to an odourant and the distilled water control was found.

View larger version (12K): [in a new window]   Fig. 5. Scatter plots of mean score (mean of control, DMS andPEA) versus chick mass for (A) blue petrels, (B) thin-billed prions and (C) common diving petrels. The trend line for blue petrels highlights a statistically significant Spearman correlation. The sample size for thin-billed prions (12) provides too low a statistical power for detecting an association. Power analysis for the Pearson Product Moment (the parametric equivalent of Spearman's correlation coefficient) indicates that a sample size of 34 is needed for a 90% chance of detecting a ±0.50 correlation coefficient (Cohen, 1988).