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Aquatic Adaptation and the Evolution of the Loss of Olfaction in Amniotes

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Evolution and Senses

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Abstract

Animals perceive surrounding environments using sensory modalities, and it is therefore hypothesized that transition to a new environment causes modification of the sensory systems. In this chapter, olfactory systems of three fully aquatic amniotes-odontocetes, mysticetes and hydrophiin sea snakes-are reviewed and compared in order to understand the aquatic adaptation and the evolution of olfactory sensory systems in amniotes. Reduction of the olfactory organs and the olfactory receptor genes has been confirmed in all three groups. However, the remaining olfactory capacities of the groups are completely different from each other: odontocetes have no sense of olfaction, whereas mysticetes still use the main olfactory system for smelling in air, and sea snakes use the accessory olfactory system for smelling underwater. These findings suggest that fully aquatic adaptation generally causes reduction of the olfactory systems which had been evolved to be optimized for life on land, but the olfactory capacities of different aquatic amniotes are not the same, and that both phylogenetic constraints and ecological demands affect the formation of olfactory capacities upon becoming aquatic.

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Acknowledgements

I thank the editors, especially Noriko Funayama and Kiyokazu Agata, for inviting me to contribute to this volume; Tsutomu Hikida for helpful comments; Elizabeth Nakajima for checking the English of the text. This work was financially supported in part by Global COE program (A06) of Kyoto University, and by MEXT KAKENHI (22770082) to TK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biophysics, Graduate School of Science Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan

    Yoshinori Shichida & Takahiro Yamashita

  2. Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi, 484-8506, Japan

    Hiroo Imai

  3. Department of Zoology, Graduate School of Science Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan

    Takushi Kishida

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  1. Yoshinori Shichida
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Shichida, Y., Yamashita, T., Imai, H., Kishida, T. (2013). Aquatic Adaptation and the Evolution of the Loss of Olfaction in Amniotes. In: Evolution and Senses. SpringerBriefs in Biology. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54222-3_3

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