Salmon follow watery odors home
Barinaga, M.
Science 286(5440): 705-706
1999
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 10577228 Document Number: 502249
Part of a special section presenting the central developments recently made in the exciting field of the neuroscience of olfaction. Researchers are beginning to understand how migrating salmon follow olfactory clues home to their hatching grounds. The survival of a salmon population relies on the fishes' ability to return to their birthplace to spawn, because a lot of their physical and behavioral traits were selected over generations for the survival advantage they provide in that particular stream. Allan Scholz of Eastern Washington University in Cheney and his team found high levels of thyroid hormone in young sockeye fish in Washington's Columbia River system shortly after hatching, and fish exposed to phenethyl alcohol or morpholine during that time chose to spawn in stream beds scented with the chemical to which they had been exposed. To save endangered fish populations, conservation managers need to be sure that the memory of their birthplace is imprinted properly in the memories of hatchery-raised fish, to minimize their straying to other streams.