The Relationship Between Urine And Marking Fluid Chemical Pheromones And Behavior Of Captive Amur Tiger

The Amur tiger(Panthera tigris altaica)is the top specie and umbrella specie in the northern forest ecosystem,and is also a Class I protected animal in China.Chemical communication plays an important role in environment adaptation of the Amur tiger and information exchange between individuals.From June 2021 to July 2022,37 captive tigers were selected from Heilongjiang Siberia Tiger Park and Hengdaohezi Siberia Tiger Park as the research objects.This study explored the interaction and behavioral response between individuals based on the information transmitted by the smell of urine or marking fluid.Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used to analyze the volatile substances in the urine and marking fluid of the Amur tiger at different physiological periods.Through analysising kinship and composition of metabolites,the correlation between metabolites and kinship coefficient was discussed.The main results are as follows:1.The experiment of sex recognition showed that when Amur tiger individuals were induced by the smell of chemical pheromones from male and female tigers,they tended to smell or mark the odor of the opposite sex.The affinity recognition experiments have shown that if odor induction is from individuals with different affinities,when it is a non-estrous odor source,tigers spent longer time sniffing the odor of non-affinities.The tiger induced by the smell of urine from different kinship relatives in the mating period also takes a long time to smell the odor of non-relatives;There was no significant difference in female individual behaviors that induced by the odor of heterosexual marking fluid with different genetic relationships.2.According to the analysis of volatile substances in urine and marking fluid,a total of116 different metabolites were detected in 8 individuals.After screening,48 specific metabolites represented by dimethyl disulfide,acetophenone and 2,3-hexanedione were obtained under different grouping conditions.Comparing substances according to different physiological periods(non-estrous and mating periods),different sexes(female and male)and different odor sources(urine and marking fluid),it was found that specific metabolites that could be distinguished were present in each group,but there was a crossover of substances between the comparison pairs.3.Spearman correlation analysis was conducted on the relationship coefficient and Euclidean distance,and the results showed that only non-estrus marking fluid had significant correlation,with a negative trend,indicating a positive correlation between the relationship and the similarity of the non-estrus marking fluid composition.Therefore for non-estrous marking fluid,the closer the genetic relationship between individuals,the higher the metabolites similarity.Far kinship and low metabolites similarity.The above results show that urine and marking fluid can reflect individual information,such as gender and kinship,so as to realize chemical communication and affect other individual behaviors,indicating that the information related to individual physical condition is closely related to the chemical pheromones encoding urine and marking fluid.This study provides a research foundation for studying the chemical communication of captive Amur tiger and a scientific reference for the wild release technology of Amur tiger.