Abstract
Olfaction is an important sensory modality for mate recognition in many mammal species. Odorants provide information about the health status, genotype, dominance status and/or reproductive status. How and when odor profiles change during sexual maturation is, however often unclear, particularly in free-ranging mammals. Here, we investigated whether the wing sac odorant of male greater sac-winged bats (Saccopteryx bilineata, Emballonuridae) differs between young and adults, and thus offers information about sexual maturity to potential mating partners. Using gas chromatography – mass spectrometry, we found differences in the odorants of young and adult males prior and during, but not after the mating period. The wing sac odorant of adult males consists of several substances, such as Pyrocoll, 2,6,10-trimethyl-3-oxo-6,10-dodecadienolide, and a so far unidentified substance; all being absent in the odor profiles of juveniles prior to the mating season. During the mating season, these substances are present in most of the juvenile odorants, but still at lower quantities compared to the wing sac odorants of adults. These results suggest that the wing sac odorant of males encodes information about age and/or sexual maturity. Although female S. bilineata start to reproduce at the age of half a year, most males of the same age postpone the sexual maturation of their olfactory phenotype until after the first mating season.
Highlights
Maturing animals do develop full reproductive performance, and converge towards an adult phenotype
The composition of wing sac odorants differed between adult and juvenile male S. bilineata (Figure 1) prior (Juvenile = Juv: N = 5; Adult = Ad: N = 5; ANOSIM: Global R = 0.32; p = 0.022) and during (Juv: N = 8; Ad: N = 16 ANOSIM: Global R = 0.37; p = 0.007), but not after the mating season (Juv: N = 6; Ad: N = 9 ANOSIM: Global R = 0.033; p = 0.3, see Figure 2a)
For odor profiles collected from males after the mating season, we found neither differences in the presence of substances nor in the amount of substances between the odorant of juveniles and adults
Summary
Maturing animals do develop full reproductive performance, and converge towards an adult phenotype. This process of maturation extends well beyond morphological and physiological changes [1], and includes the olfactory phenotype [2]. Many sexually selected scent glands are regulated by plasma androgen levels, and when individuals maturate, external glands may become activated and secret volatiles in response to elevated plasma androgen levels [3,4,5,6]. How and when odor profiles change during sexual maturation remains often unclear, in free-ranging mammals. We asked whether odorants of a free-ranging mammal encodes for information about sexual maturity, and if so, which volatiles are changing during sexual maturation
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