This research will provide new, fundamental information concerning chemical communication in a primate species. The overall long-range objective is to define the chemical nature and behavioral significance of the scent marks utilized by the South American tamarin, Saguinus fuscicollis, a member of the family Callitrichidae, in social and sexual communication. Studies are proposed to elucidate in detail those chemical patterns which encode gender and species. A combination of analytical techniques, pattern recognition methods and behavioral assays will identify those components or patterns of compounds, both volatile and non-volatile, which are associated with the commmunicatory information. Bacteriological studies will determine which of the active components are of bacterial origin. In addition, a pilot study will assess the possible role of the fatty acids in encoding individual differences in the scent marks. We anticipate that this research will lead to a much more complete understanding of the nature of the chemical code in this primate species, and in the end that it will be possible to reconstruct with synthetic formulations a variety of the communicatory signals employed by the tamarins. To accomplish this goal, a unique interdisciplinary research team consisting of two organic chemists, a primatologist and two bacteriologists, as well as a pattern recognition expert has been assembled at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. The proposed studies follow logically from prior work of our laboratory. To the best of our knowledge, this program involving the very close collaboration of scientists in all these areas of expertise (organic and analytical chemistry, statistics, behavioral biology, primatology and microbiology) to explore and define a chemical communication system in a primate species is unique in the scientific world.
