Diet influences on odor production and venoms

Changing the diet of a fish may change the behavior of conspecifics it interacts with subsequently. For instance, if one of a pair of male brown bullhead, I. nebulosus (a catfish), is removed from the tank and fed beef liver instead of the usual trout chow and then returned to his partner in their original tank, the resident will behave differently than if the same male is reintroduced without a diet change. The former tank mate is now a chemical stranger. The behavior changes include loss of territory and more activity by the smaller, manipulated fish and more aggression and activity by the resident fish. These diet-dependent odors are not specialized pheromones, and yet they are probably important social chemical cues in the natural territorial and dominance behavior of bullhead catfish. Body odor is the more appropriate term (Bryant and Atema, 1987). 

The toxic alkaloids of poison dart frogs appear to depend on diet (Daly etal, 1994,2000 Caldwell, 1996). Details are described in Section 10.2.2. 

Snake venom composition can reflect diet. The Southeast Asian pitviper, Calloselasma rhodostoma (Viperidae), preys on different animals in different 

Similar to amphibians, the pitohui, a toxic bird in New Guinea, appears to derive its toxic alkaloids from its invertebrate diet (Dumbacher etal, 2000). 

To discriminate diet-dependent odors can be vital in the context of reproductive behavior. Supporting the hypothesis that animals discriminate and prefer potential mates that are in good nutritional condition, Ferkin et ah (1997) showed that meadow voles preferred odors of members of their own species that are on a high-protein diet (Table 3.2). 

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