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Seasonal and reproductive variation in chemical constituents of scent signals in wild giant pandas

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Abstract

Seasonally reproducing animals show many behavioral and physiological changes during the mating period, including increased signaling for intrasexual competition and mate attraction. We collected 102 anogenital gland secretions (AGS) from marking trees in Foping Nature Reserve, and used gas chromatography mass spectrometry analyze these chemical composition. Of these marks, all but one were from males, confirmed with DNA analysis. We found that several chemical constituents, especially volatile compounds, is present only during the mating season and that the relative abundance of many compounds changed as a function of breeding season, whereas nonvolatile compounds were lower in the mating season. This seasonal variation in chemical composition of AGS most likely plays an important role in governing giant panda reproduction, including mate location, attraction, and male-male competition. The chemical properties of many of these putative chemosignals—such as volatility and longevity—are suggestive of these roles, and undoubtedly contribute to successful reproduction for this species with a characteristically sophisticated chemical communication system. We also found a number of important differences between the chemical constituents of AGS from wild pandas and those found in previous studies with captive pandas, suggesting that inappropriate chemosignal composition may contribute to poor reproductive success in captive breeding programs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2016YFC0503200) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDB-SSW-SMC047). We gratefully acknowledge the support of Foping National Nature Reserve for permission to conduct this field research. We thank Xiaowei Qin for their help with the GC-MS analysis, Xiaolin Wang, Kai Gao and Yiwen He for their assistance in sample collection, Xiaoyue Lu and Min Li for their DNA analysis, and Huizhong Fan for the data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Wenliang Zhou & Dingzhen Liu

  2. CAS Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Wenliang Zhou, Yonggang Nie, Yibo Hu & Fuwen Wei

  3. Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, China

    Yonggang Nie, Yibo Hu & Fuwen Wei

  4. Institute for Conservation Research, San Diego Zoo Global, San Diego, CA, 92027-7000, USA

    Ronald R. Swaisgood

  5. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents in Agriculture, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yaohua Zhang

  6. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Fuwen Wei

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  1. Wenliang Zhou
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  2. Yonggang Nie
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  3. Yibo Hu
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  4. Ronald R. Swaisgood
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  5. Yaohua Zhang
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Correspondence to Dingzhen Liu or Fuwen Wei.

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Table S1

Backgrounds of anogenital gland secretions samples used for analysis and DNA sex and individual identification of giant pandas, A. melanoleuca

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Zhou, W., Nie, Y., Hu, Y. et al. Seasonal and reproductive variation in chemical constituents of scent signals in wild giant pandas. Sci. China Life Sci. 62, 648–660 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-018-9388-9

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