Food odour preference behaviour in three Australian Pteropus species (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae)
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis reports an investigation into the olfactory preferences of three Australian Megachiropteran species, Pteropus poliocephalus, P. scapulatus and P. alecto, for a variety of plant-derived odours. Methodologies were devised for investigating odour preference behaviour, involving equipment design, development of new applications for existing statistical techniques for the analysis of preference data, and analysis of odorous headspace in test mixtures and from flowers in the field. Initially, preliminary behavioural observations (Section II) indicated that all three bat species exhibited positive approach behaviours in response to fruit-derived odours and that they responded both within and between species to different quantities of test odour, 0.5mL of test odour distillate at a decision distance of 125mm producing the optimal responses in P. poliocephalus and P. scapulatus, with P. alecto responding with equal intensity to all odour quantities. A common behavioural ethogram was devised for Pteropus, and applied to more detailed analyses of preference responses. These revealed that within each species, bats expressed different degrees of preference for different odours under controlled conditions. When odour preferences within a species were ranked on a decision axis, odour pairs with low separation values were more likely to change in rank position than those further apart. Not only then was each species able to detect fruit odours, but also they could discriminate between different odour types. Patterns of preference for the same test odour stimuli were not the same when compared across species. P. poliocephalus and P. scapulatus preference hierarchies had distinct regions of clustering of odours where the outcomes of pair-wise choices were variable. In contrast, odour comparisons on P. alecto ranks produce more definitive outcomes, with the most significant agreement in preference patterns across individual bats. The existence of preference intransitivity …
abstract: This thesis reports an investigation into the olfactory preferences of three Australian Megachiropteran species, Pteropus poliocephalus, P. scapulatus and P. alecto, for a variety of plant-derived odours. Methodologies were devised for investigating odour preference behaviour, involving equipment design, development of new applications for existing statistical techniques for the analysis of preference data, and analysis of odorous headspace in test mixtures and from flowers in the field. Initially, preliminary behavioural observations (Section II) indicated that all three bat species exhibited positive approach behaviours in response to fruit-derived odours and that they responded both within and between species to different quantities of test odour, 0.5mL of test odour distillate at a decision distance of 125mm producing the optimal responses in P. poliocephalus and P. scapulatus, with P. alecto responding with equal intensity to all odour quantities. A common behavioural ethogram was devised for Pteropus, and applied to more detailed analyses of preference responses. These revealed that within each species, bats expressed different degrees of preference for different odours under controlled conditions. When odour preferences within a species were ranked on a decision axis, odour pairs with low separation values were more likely to change in rank position than those further apart. Not only then was each species able to detect fruit odours, but also they could discriminate between different odour types. Patterns of preference for the same test odour stimuli were not the same when compared across species. P. poliocephalus and P. scapulatus preference hierarchies had distinct regions of clustering of odours where the outcomes of pair-wise choices were variable. In contrast, odour comparisons on P. alecto ranks produce more definitive outcomes, with the most significant agreement in preference patterns across individual bats. The existence of preference intransitivity …
author: Oldfield, Anthony Charles
language: en
date published: 1996
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:30Z
provider: Australian Catholic University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian Catholic University

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property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/109270