This article was titled “Genetic consequences of historical anthropogenic and ecological events on giant pandas,” and was written by multiple  contributors because of the project’s focus. This research was conducted because of the growing concern about the Giant pandas’ ability to adapt to the changing climate due to its increasing habitat loss, poaching, and other issues like that.  In this article the researchers focus more on two of the main wild panda populations, the Qionaglai and the Minshan.

There were two main areas that the article focused on– one of which is lesser known. The two areas were the consequences of bamboo flowering and the exact populations where the poaching and removal from the wild are currently taking place. Though according to the research results that the team put together, the panda populations are actually fairly healthy genetically speaking with only a little bit of evidence for bottlenecking in the Qionaglai population of pandas, but that was found in both historical and modern samples which showed a long-term decline (several thousand years) not short-term. Though at the end of the article they made sure to warn that even though pandas do seem to have a fairly bright future now, it is only because of the conservation efforts taken and laws passed by China. Bamboo flowering is a bad for the pandas because after the flowering occurs, the plants die off in 40-100 year intervals and directly reduce food availability.

The main question this article seems to be answering is whether the historical data on the current population and genetic health of giant pandas is correct or if there is currently a distinct loss of genetic diversity in the near future.

In conducting this study the researchers had to gather data for both historical data and current data for their focus groups — the two panda populations. For the historical data they collected skins from institutions and agencies across china, and the deaths of those pandas was contributed to starvation due to bamboo flowering during the 1970s and 1980s or poaching during the 1950’s and 1988 when China  enacted a wildlife protection act. They also collected blood, fur, and feces from multiple individuals whom were either wild or wild, but in captivity and awaiting release. So the majority of the data used was observatory in form.

Zhu, Lifeng, Yibo Hu, Dunwu Qi, Hua Wu, Xiangjiang Zhan, Zhejun Zhang, Michael W. Bruford, Jinliang Wang, Xuyu Yang, Xiaodong Gu, Lei Zhang, Baowei Zhang, Shanning Zhang, and Fuwen Wei. “Genetic consequences of historical anthropogenic and ecological events on giant pandas.” Ecology 94.10 (2013): 2346-357. text.