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201519Dec14:07

Free choice of part­ner will boost cap­tive breed­ing of giant pandas

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 19 Decem­ber 2015 | mod­i­fied 19 Decem­ber 2015
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Giant panda cubsSci­en­tists hop­ing to breed the world’s most iconic endan­gered species, the giant panda (Ail­uropoda melanoleuca), have always faced their own real­ity of “tough love.” Female pan­das ovu­late just once a year and have a two– to three-​day win­dow for con­ceiv­ing. Beyond the per­fect tim­ing required, there is the com­pat­i­bil­ity chal­lenge. Breed­ing pairs are typ­i­cally cho­sen based on the com­pat­i­bil­ity of their genet­ics. Unfor­tu­nately, sim­ply putting a male and female in a room together does not always result in a cub. Researchers have even turned to Via­gra and “panda porn” to get the finicky bears in the mood.

Now, a team of eight researchers — includ­ing two with Ore­gon Zoo ties — have revealed that suc­cess­ful breed­ing and cub sur­vival sig­nif­i­cantly depend on one fac­tor: whether or not the mom and dad choose each other. The find­ings are pub­lished on 15 Decem­ber in the jour­nal Nature Communications.

Researcher Meghan Martin-​Wintle and col­leagues ran an exper­i­ment that allowed 40 pan­das in a Chi­nese zoo to choose between two poten­tial mates. Females could indi­cate which part­ner they pre­ferred by scent mark­ing, chirp­ing and inter­ac­tions through a mesh bar­rier. Males were given the same choice.

When the panda feel­ings were mutual, repro­duc­tive suc­cess was 80 per­cent higher than with pairs that did not have mutual mate preference.

This sug­gests that incor­po­rat­ing mate choice could make a huge dif­fer­ence for the suc­cess of many [giant panda] con­ser­va­tion breed­ing programmes
Meghan Martin-​Wintle, lead author, and inter alia Divi­sion of Applied Ani­mal Ecol­ogy, Insti­tute for Con­ser­va­tion Research, San Diego Zoo Global, USA »

Giant pan­das num­ber fewer than 2,000 in the wild. If we can pro­duce more indi­vid­u­als through these kinds of pro­grammes, we’ll have a larger sur­plus for rein­tro­duc­tion,” Martin-​Wintle said.

As of 2012, the World Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos and Aquar­i­ums reported that 31 of the 33 ani­mals clas­si­fied as Extinct in the Wild on the IUCN Red List are actively captive-​bred in zoos and aquar­i­ums. Some species, such as the Cal­i­for­nia con­dor, wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for cap­tive breed­ing. The giant panda is clas­si­fied as Endan­gered accord­ing the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species .

The study’s find­ings mir­rored what Martin-​Wintle along with Ore­gon Zoo deputy con­ser­va­tion man­ager David Shep­herd­son and oth­ers had pre­vi­ously dis­cov­ered in Colum­bia Basin pygmy rab­bits, an endan­gered Pacific North­west native that the Ore­gon Zoo has suc­cess­fully bred and reintroduced.

Wildlife con­ser­va­tion takes many tools, from habi­tat pro­tec­tion to com­mu­nity sup­port and advo­cacy. Cap­tive breed­ing is only one of the tools in the toolbox
« David Shep­herd­son, co-​author, Biol­ogy Depart­ment, Port­land State Uni­ver­sity and Ore­gon Zoo, USA

Zoos are in a unique posi­tion to pro­tect endan­gered species, cap­tive breed­ing being only one exam­ple of how we can help. Of course, breed­ing pro­grammes can only be suc­cess­ful if we have suit­able and safe habi­tat to rein­tro­duce ani­mals into,” said Shepherdson.

The take-​home mes­sage is that we should prob­a­bly con­duct more of this kind of research with other con­ser­va­tion breed­ing pro­grams in other species,” Martin-​Wintle said.

The study was made pos­si­ble in part by a Future for Wildlife grant awarded by the Ore­gon Zoo Foun­da­tion in 2011.

Ore­gon Zoo has part­nered up with Port­land State Uni­ver­sity. This part­ner­ship pro­vides grad­u­ate stu­dents in Biol­ogy a research oppor­tu­nity. The research con­ducted can lead to impor­tant changes in the way we should under­stand and approach sav­ing endan­gered species.

Pan­das play in their with snow enriched enclo­sure at the San Diego Zoo:


(Source: Ore­gon Zoo media release, 14.12.2015; San Diego Zoo YouTube channel)


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Tiger range countries map

Tiger map” (CC BY 2.5) by Sander­son et al., 2006.

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