Habitat Selection Of Giant Pandas In Different Regions And At Special Stages During Life History In The Qinling Mountains

The Qinling Mountains is the northest distribution area of giant pandas in China, although this area is praised as a natural shelter for the giant pandas, the habitat deterioration and fragmentations exist in some extent. Meanwhile, giant pandas which live here keep on adjusting the strategy of adaption in various environments. For the wildlife, it is necessary for some species to choose significantly heterogeneous habitats to satisfy their survival and propaganation. The determinants about habitat selection for animals are complex, which is influenced by many factors, including characteristics of the habitat and animals, the availability of food, prey and competition. Any factors which might cause changes of animal behavior, activities, physiological and habitat will affect the habitat selection of animals, moreover, for animals, different factors cause different results in various stages during their whole life history.In order to know the habitat selection of giant pandas in different regions as well as at different stages and breedings dens, we choose Foping, Changqing and Taibai as our reseach focus, which are not only three national nature reserves, but also representativeness. We did field work in different seasons during the past year, and we collected the basic data about habitat selection, habitat selection during oestrum, and breeding dens selection of giant pandas.In order to achieve our goals, we used various statistic methods to deal with different data that we collected. We used Frequencies to compute appearance frequencies of giant pandas in different microhabitats;used One-Way ANOVA to analyze the difference between different microhabitat in different regions, used PCA to find main facorts which influence the habitat selection of giant pandas in different regions and atthe special stage during their life history. In addition, for the data about breeding dens of giant pandas, we used t-test to compare if there is difference of temperature-humidity between inside and outside of breeding dens, meanwhile, we used the same way to judge whether there is similar difference between two types of dens-tunnel and rock. Meanwhile, we used K-Means Cluster to analyze other data to find the common factors of the same type of dens, and then identify the main factors of breeding dens selection.The result showed as following: 1. Foping, Changqing and Taibai have a higher density area of wild giant panda respectively, and generally speaking, the suitable panda habitats in the Qinling Mountains have the following character: hillsides with the mild. grades, huge area with continuous bamboo distribution, near the water resource, fewer disturbances of human and other animals, mid position of a hillside and, better canopy desity.2. In order to satisfy the necessary condition of mating and congragating, giant pandas which are in oestrum might choose the following habitat: altiltude is about 1800m, less disturbance, mid or upper positions of cliffy hillsides, moreover, with aboundant food, higher density canopy of arboreal trees, good shield condition and arboreal trees which could be olfaction cues.3. The heterogeneity of outside and inside factors is the main reason in giant panda breeding dens selection, and there are similar choices of the two types of breeding dens. In all the natural dens of the Qinling Mountains, the giant panda might prefer the dens which have following characters: altitude> 1800m, eutropic and upper hillsides, human disturbance< 1500m, the distance to the nearest water resource within 150m, better shield condition around dens, and with more humid and good rain aviodence inside dens..