ArticleScientific reports2017
Anatomical evidence for scent guided foraging in the turkey vulture.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ecological role of emergent properties in the chemodiversity landscape.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- Social interactions during foraging may be a key to survival for seabirds in the Southern Ocean.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Evaluation of a Multimodal Anesthetic Protocol for Immobilization in Black Vultures (Veterinary sciences · 2025Article
- Vulture Exclusion Halves Large Carcass Decomposition Rates and Doubles Fly Abundance.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The Role of Vulture (Accipitriformes) Cutaneous Microbiota in Infectious Disease Protection.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Linking Functional Traits To Trophic Roles In Scavenger Assemblages.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Molecular characterization of chicken DA systems reveals that the avian personality gene,Frontiers in neuroanatomy · 2025Article
- Bridging Evolutionary History and Conservation of New World Vultures.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Scavenging in the realm of senses: smell and vision drive recruitment at carcasses in Neotropical ecosystems.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Cats and dogs: A mesopredator navigating risk and reward provisioned by an apex predator.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Flying bats use serial sampling to locate odour sources.Biology letters · 2021Article
- A larval aggregation pheromone as foraging cue for insectivorous birds.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Landscape transformations produce favorable roosting conditions for turkey vultures and black vultures.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Smell of green leaf volatiles attracts white storks to freshly cut meadows.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Monitoring the dead as an ecosystem indicator.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Sight or smell: which senses do scavenging raptors use to find food?Animal cognition · 2019Article
- Applying circuit theory and landscape linkage maps to reintroduction planning for California Condors.PloS one · 2019Article
- Evidence of niche differentiation for two sympatric vulture species in the Southeastern United States.Movement ecology · 2019Article
- Roads do not increase carrion use by a vertebrate scavenging community.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Protective role of the vulture facial skin and gut microbiomes aid adaptation to scavenging.Acta veterinaria Scandinavica · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) is a widespread, scavenging species in the Western Hemisphere that locates carrion by smell. Scent guided foraging is associated with an expansion of the olfactory bulbs of the brain in vertebrates, but no such neuroanatomical data exists for vultures. We provide the first measurements of turkey vulture brains, including the size of their olfactory bulbs and numbers of mitral cells, which provide the primary output of the olfactory bulbs. Comparative analyses show that the turkey vulture has olfactory bulbs that are 4× larger and contain twice as many mitral cells as those of the sympatric black vulture (Coragyps atratus), despite having brains that are 20% smaller. The turkey vulture has the largest olfactory bulbs in absolute terms and adjusted for brain size among birds, but the number of mitral cells is proportional to the size of their olfactory bulbs. The combination of large olfactory bulbs, high mitral cell counts and a greatly enlarged nasal cavity likely reflects a highly sensitive olfactory system. We suggest that this sensitive sense of smell allowed the turkey vulture to colonize biomes that are suboptimal for scavenging birds and become the most widespread vulture species in the world.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.