Chemical profiles of Leach's storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) feathers collected on Bon Portage Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

Avian chemical communication, once largely overlooked, is a growing field
that has revealed the important role that olfaction plays in the social
lives of some birds. Leach’s storm-petrels (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) have a
remarkable sense of smell and a strong, musky scent. This long-lived,
monogamous seabird relies on olfaction for nest relocation and foraging,
but whether they use scent for communication is less well studied. They
are nocturnally active at the breeding colony and yet successfully reunite
with their mate despite poor night-vision, indicating an important role
for non-visual communication. We investigated the chemical profiles of
Leach’s storm-petrels to determine whether there is socially relevant
information encoded in their plumage odor. To capture the compounds
comprising their strong scent, we developed a method to study the
compounds present in the air surrounding their feathers using headspace
stir bar sorptive extraction coupled with gas-chromatography
mass-spectrometry. We collected feathers from Leach’s storm-petrels
breeding on Bon Portage Island in Nova Scotia, Canada in both 2015 and
2016. Our method detected 142 commonly occurring compounds. We found
interannual differences in chemical profiles between the two sampling
years. Males and females had similar chemical profiles, while individuals
had distinct chemical signatures across the two years. These findings
suggest that the scent of the Leach’s storm-petrel provides sociochemical
information that could facilitate olfactory recognition of individuals and
may inform mate choice decisions.