Avian olfactory neurogenesis

Summry— Chemodetection represents one of the more primitive ways in which animals acquire information about their environment. Olfaction, and elaborate form of chemodetection, is common to every species of vertebrae. The mechanisms of olfaction have been particularly studied in rodents, although their olfactory organ, the olfactory epithelium, paradoxically presents the highest degree of complexity. For some years now, we have been interested in the avian olfactory system which is less complex than its mammalian counterpart. Like humans, birds are microsmatic and present the same basic characteristics as other air breathing species. In this review, we propose to discuss several aspects of the maturation of the olfactory system during development, paying particular attention to recent advances in this field.