Abstract: To understand the aggression pattern maintaining social rank in captive male forest musk deer, we observed conflicting behaviors (i.e. defending, chasing, displacing, attacking, and threatening) among 14 captive males by behavioral sampling from June 1 to July 28 in 2016, at the Maerkang Musk Deer Breed Center, Sichuan Province of China. The relationships between their social rank and initiating or received conflicting behaviors and expression intensities were analyzed. We found that they had stable social hierarchical structure. The following behaviors were considered “aggressive”: chasing, displacing, attacking, and threatening. As the initiators of conflict behaviors, males performed both defending and aggressive behaviors. The frequencies of defending (7.71±2.18, n=14) were significantly higher than those of aggressive behaviors: chasing (1.29±0.50, n=14) (P<0.05), displacing (1.36±0.57, n=14) (P<0.05), attacking (0.21±0.15,n=14) (P<0.05) and threatening (1.29±0.77, n=14) (P<0.05). There was a significantly negative relationship between frequencies of defending behaviors and social ranks (P<0.05). Aggressive behavior types that males of different ranks initiated were different. Males with high-rank expressed both high-intensity (chasing and attacking) and low-intensity (displacing and threatening) aggressive behaviors. Low-ranked males did not express highintensity aggressive behaviors, but only exhibited displacing behaviors. As the receivers of conflict behaviors, the frequencies of displacing (1.43±0.532,n=14) that male received were significantly higher than those of attacking (0.29±0.12, n=14) (P<0.05) and threatening (0.36±0.16, n=14, P<0.05). Although the frequencies of aggressive behaviors of mediumranked males(5.50±1.50,n=2) were higher than those of low-ranked (4.60±2.08, n=5) and high-ranked individuals (1.14±0.55, n=7), the difference was not statistically significant (all P>0.05). In conclusion, male forest musk deer mainly showed low-intensity aggressive behaviors to maintain social rank. The initiators of conflict behaviors were the individuals that occupied higher rank and expressed more high-intensity aggressive behaviors.

Key words: ecological characteristics, environmental factor, restoration method, Carex tussock, Sun Island wetland