Abstract: Recent studies on olfaction in penguins have focused on their use of odours while foraging. It has been proposed for some seabirds that an olfactory landscape shaped by odours coming from feeding areas exists. Islands and colonies, however, may also contribute to the olfactory landscape and may act as an orienting map. To test sensitivities to a colony scent we studied whether King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) could detect the smell of sand, feathers or feces by holding presentations beneath their beaks while they naturally slept on the beach. Penguins had a significantly greater response to the feathers and feces presentations than to sand. Although only a first step in exploring a broader role of olfaction in this species, our results raise the possibility of olfaction being used by King penguins in three potential ways: (1) locating the colony from the water or the shore, (2) finding the rendezvous zone within the colony where a chick or partner may be found, or (3) recognizing individuals by scent, as in Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus demersus).

Abstract: Invited talk for the symposium entitled 'Are migratory animals superspreaders of infection?' of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting in Portland, Oregon, January 2016.
Abstract: Spatial disease ecology is emerging as a new field that requires the integration of complementary approaches to address how the distribution and movements of hosts and parasites may condition the dynamics of their interactions. In this context, migration, the seasonal movement of animals to different zones of their distribution, is assumed to play a key role in the broad scale circulation of parasites and pathogens. Nevertheless, migration is not the only type of host movement that can influence the spatial ecology, evolution and epidemiology of infectious diseases. Dispersal, the movement of individuals between a location where they were born or bred to a location where they breed, has attracted attention as another important type of movement for the spatial dynamics of infectious diseases. Host dispersal has notably been identified as a key factor for the evolution of host-parasite interactions as it implies gene flow among local host populations and thus a potential for coevolution with infectious agents in a spatial setting. But not all movements between host populations lead to dispersal per se . One type of host movement that has been neglected but that may also play a role in parasite spread is prospecting, i.e. movements targeted at selecting and securing habitat for future breeding. Prospecting movements, which have been studied in detail in certain social species, could result in the dispersal of infectious agents among different host populations without necessarily involving host dispersal. In this paper, we outline how these various types of host movements might influence the circulation of infectious disease agents and discuss methodological approaches that could be used to assess their importance. We specifically focus on examples from work on colonial seabirds, ticks and tick-borne infectious agents. These are indeed convenient biological models because they are clearly spatially structured and involve relatively simple communities of interacting species. Overall, we highlight that a detailed consideration of the behavioral and population ecology of hosts and parasites is required to disentangle the relative role of different types of movements for the spread of infectious diseases.