ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Chemical fingerprints encode mother-offspring similarity, colony membership, relatedness, and genetic quality in fur seals.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Geographical variation of chemical signals and odor discrimination in the great Himalayan leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros armiger).BMC biology · 2026Article
- The marginal male hypothesis explains only small amounts of spatial variation in density in pinnipeds.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Common wall lizards learn familiar-unfamiliar identity of conspecifics through chemical cues.Learning & behavior · 2025Article
- Refinement of the Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella) reference genome increases continuity and completeness.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Article
- Combined perceptual and chemical analyses show no compelling evidence for ovulatory cycle shifts in women's axillary odour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- No evidence for a role of MHC class II genotype in the chemical encoding of heterozygosity and relatedness in Antarctic fur seals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Intronic primers reveal unexpectedly high major histocompatibility complex diversity in Antarctic fur seals.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- A pachyderm perfume: odour encodes identity and group membership in African elephants.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Mother-pup recognition mechanisms in Australia sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) using uni- and multi-modal approaches.Animal cognition · 2022Review
- Towards an understanding of multimodal traits of female reproduction in chimpanzees.Primates; journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Feather chemicals contain information about the major histocompatibility complex in a highly scented seabird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Odour-mediated Interactions Between an Apex Reptilian Predator and its Mammalian Prey.Journal of chemical ecology · 2022Article
- Evidence for an Allee effect in a declining fur seal population.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- What smells? Developing in-field methods to characterize the chemical composition of wild mammalian scent cues.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Food stress, but not experimental exposure to mercury, affects songbird preen oil composition.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2020Article
- Article
- Heterozygosity at neutral and immune loci is not associated with neonatal mortality due to microbial infection in Antarctic fur seals.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Wax Ester Composition of Songbird Preen Oil Varies Seasonally and Differs between Sexes, Ages, and Populations.Journal of chemical ecology · 2019Article
- Group and kin recognition via olfactory cues in chimpanzees (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Female Chemical Signalling Underlying Reproduction in Mammals.Journal of chemical ecology · 2018Review
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8 authors.
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Abstract
Chemical communication underpins virtually all aspects of vertebrate social life, yet remains poorly understood because of its highly complex mechanistic basis. We therefore used chemical fingerprinting of skin swabs and genetic analysis to explore the chemical cues that may underlie mother-offspring recognition in colonially breeding Antarctic fur seals. By sampling mother-offspring pairs from two different colonies, using a variety of statistical approaches and genotyping a large panel of microsatellite loci, we show that colony membership, mother-offspring similarity, heterozygosity, and genetic relatedness are all chemically encoded. Moreover, chemical similarity between mothers and offspring reflects a combination of genetic and environmental influences, the former partly encoded by substances resembling known pheromones. Our findings reveal the diversity of information contained within chemical fingerprints and have implications for understanding mother-offspring communication, kin recognition, and mate choice.
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