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

> Why do golden lion tamarins rub their scent onto branches? A year with 34 wild tamarins in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest showed they mark fruit trees, perhaps to find food again, and that alpha males mark far more than other males. Alpha females stepped up their marking when neighbouring groups came close, but the marks did not seem to defend territory borders.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2003-miller-laszlo-role-scent-marking-social/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Kimran E. Miller, Katalin Laszlo and James M. Dietz
- **Year published:** 2003
- **Journal or source:** Animal Behaviour
- **Full citation:** Miller, K. E., Laszlo, K. and Dietz, J. M. 2003. The role of scent marking in the social communication of wild golden lion tamarins, Leontopithecus rosalia. Animal Behaviour 65(4): 795-803.
- **DOI:** 10.1006/anbe.2003.2105
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.2003.2105

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > Golden lion tamarin
- **Region:** South America > Brazil
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Communication; Feeding; Home range
- **Methods and technology:** Direct observation; Geographic Information System (GIS); Wilcoxon matched pairs test
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology
- **Year published:** 2003

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia), 34 wild animals in eight groups (29 adults and subadults analysed). Other species named only from earlier studies: common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), saddle-back tamarin (Saguinus fuscicollis), cottontop tamarin (Saguinus oedipus), moustached tamarin (Saguinus mystax), black-mantled tamarin (Saguinus nigricollis), buffy-headed marmoset (Callithrix flaviceps), tassel-ear marmoset (Callithrix humeralifer), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), wolf (Canis lupus), coyote (Canis latrans), otter (Lutra lutra), wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus), sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber), aardwolf (Proteles cristatus), pika (Ochotona princeps), rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris).
- **Location and habitat:** Poço das Antas Biological Reserve (22°30’-33’S, 42°15’-19’W), Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. A 6300 ha remnant of Atlantic Coastal rainforest with secondary swamp forest and early successional forest, 20 to 200 m above sea level, with a dry season (May to August, April) and a wet season (September to March). Group territories averaged 44.5 ha.
- **Topics:** scent marking; olfactory (smell-based) communication; circumgenital and sternal scent glands; marking fruit trees; relocating food; fruit seasonality; dominance within groups; alpha and subordinate animals; intergroup encounters; territory defence; areas of territorial overlap versus exclusive use; female immigration and female competition; relatedness within groups; primates (callitrichids: marmosets and tamarins).
- **Statistics or models:** Two-tailed nonparametric tests: Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks tests and Wilcoxon two-sample tests (GraphPad InStat, SAS). Territory areas from 95% contours with the Adaptive Kernel method in ArcView 3.1 (Animal Movement extension). Locations recorded every 20 minutes. Note: Table 1 gives average group compositions that add up to 33 animals and about 5 juveniles, while the text reports 34 animals and 4 juveniles; the table values are averages over the year, so this may not be a true error. Group size is given as averaging 4.6, which does not match the Table 1 averages (about 4.1).
- **Data type:** New field data: focal-animal observations on 125 days (49 of them dawn to dusk) from May 1998 to April 1999; 339.4 hours with animals visible.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Golden lion tamarins are small monkeys of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest that leave scent marks by rubbing glands on their chest (sternal glands) or around their genitals (circumgenital glands) on branches. The authors asked what this marking is for. They tested four ideas: that scent marks show group members where food is; that they signal rank within a group; that they defend a territory; and that they advertise an animal’s status to neighbouring groups.

From May 1998 to April 1999 they followed 34 wild tamarins in eight groups in Poço das Antas Biological Reserve, Brazil, on 125 days. In 15-minute watches of one animal at a time, they counted every scent mark and noted whether it was placed on a fruit tree (a species the tamarins feed on) or another tree. They recorded every meeting with a neighbouring group, and the group’s position every 20 minutes to map territories and the areas shared with neighbours. Each animal was classed as dominant (alpha) or subordinate from behaviours such as arch walking, displacing others at food, and guarding mates. Juveniles were left out because they marked very rarely (nine marks in the whole study).

### 2. What they found

- They recorded 1125 scent marks from 29 adults and subadults in 339.4 hours of watching. Most marking seemed to be done by dragging the body along a branch.

- On average, adults marked 2.3 times per hour: alpha males 4.1, alpha females 2.4, subordinate males 1.3 and subordinate females 1.1.

- Food: tamarins marked fruit trees more often than other trees, relative to time spent feeding and not feeding. Against the authors’ prediction, they marked more fruit trees in the wet season than the dry season. Groups also visited and fed in more fruit trees each day in the wet season.

- Rank within the group: on days without meetings with other groups, alpha males marked more than subordinate males. Alpha and subordinate females did not differ.

- Territory: groups did not mark more in areas shared with neighbours than in areas they used alone.

- Meetings with other groups: alpha females marked more during these meetings than on days without them, and more than subordinate females during meetings. Alpha males and subordinate males did not mark more during meetings, and did not differ from each other during meetings. There were too few data to test subordinate females.

- Subordinate females were often daughters (or granddaughters) of the alpha male: only two of the five groups with subordinate females had ones unrelated to him. Five of the six groups with subordinate males had males unrelated to the alpha female.

### 3. What they concluded

- Scent marking in golden lion tamarins has several functions, depending on the social and ecological setting.

- Marking fruit trees probably helps group members find food again. More marking in the wet season may be because the tamarins came across more unmarked fruit trees then, or because rain washes scent away faster.

- Males appear to use how often they mark to signal rank to other males in their own group. Alpha females do not, perhaps because subordinate females are usually the alpha male’s daughters and pose no threat to her.

- The study found no evidence that scent marking defends a territory.

- Alpha females appear to use scent marking during meetings with other groups to communicate with females in those groups, perhaps to discourage females from moving in, since a female can only join a group by replacing the breeding female.

- Future work could measure how much scent is left and for how long, the chemistry of the scents, and how other tamarins respond (sniffing and marking over).

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- Territory sizes and shared areas mapped from locations every 20 minutes, using the Adaptive Kernel method in ArcView 3.1 with the Animal Movement extension.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- Scent marks are signs too. In this species the marks were concentrated on fruit trees, mostly made by dragging the body along branches, and placed by alpha males most often, which suggests where and when such signs are most likely to be found.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: The role of scent marking in the social communication of wild golden lion tamarins, Leontopithecus rosalia (Miller and Laszlo et al., 2003). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2003-miller-laszlo-role-scent-marking-social/