Role of Olfaction in Fish Behaviour

Abstract

The chemical senses of teleosts play a major role in mediating physiological and behavioural responses to the fishes’ environment. Chemical stimuli include biochemical products released by conspecifics and other organisms some of which may reveal the presence and location of food, mates, predators, or spawning sites. Although available information indicates that these chemical signals, including pheromones, are more widespread in the social interactions of fish than might have been suspected, investigations are still largely at a descriptive stage. Pheromones are strictly defined as substances that are secreted by an individual and received by other members of the same species, releasing a specific behavioural reaction, or leading to a developmental process. In fish, very few investigations have seriously considered whether the chemical interactions concerned are mediated by a pheromone in its strictest sense. Not a single teleost pheromone has been fully identified chemically (for detailed survey see Liley 1982).