The Role of Pheromone Trails in the Sociobiology of Snakes

Abstract

This book contains 32 papers presented at a symposium in 1976. The focus of the symposium was on chemical communication in higher animals, most notably mammals. This included the chemical nature, production, and reception of chemical signals, and their modulating effects on behavior. The book draws together vertebrate pheromone research from the relevant areas of physiology, chemistry, ecology, animal behavior and psychology. In the various contributions, the theoretical concepts and practical problems of chemical signaling are investigated by exploring such fundamental questions as its evolution in higher vertebrates, including man, its adaptive significance to the animal, the social contexts in which the chemical signals are operative and their ecological determinants.