The role of scent marking in the social communication of wild golden lion tamarins, Leontopithecus rosalia

The role of scent marking in the social communication of mammals is widely variable. One reason for this variation is that the function of scent marking may vary with different ecological and social conditions. The purpose of this study was to test four nonexclusive hypotheses explaining the role of scent-marking frequency in different ecological and social contexts for wild golden lion tamarins. Relative to ecological contexts, we compared scent-marking frequency during seasons of abundant and scarce food resources. Relative to social contexts, we compared scent-marking frequency when groups were isolated and when groups were in the presence of neighbouring groups. We found that the tamarins used scent marking to mark the location of food resources. Additionally, males used scent marking to communicate intrasexual dominance within their groups, while females did not. Our results also indicate that alpha females increased their scent-marking frequency to communicate to members of other groups, while the presence of members of other groups did not elicit a similar response by alpha males. We did not find evidence for a territorial function of scent marking in golden lion tamarins. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.