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Social dominance, seasonal movements, and spatial segregation in African elephants: a contribution to conservation behavior

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Abstract

The structure of dominance relationships among individuals in a population is known to influence their fitness, access to resources, risk of predation, and even energy budgets. Recent advances in global positioning system radio telemetry provide data to evaluate the influence of social relationships on population spatial structure and ranging tactics. Using current models of socio-ecology as a framework, we explore the spatial behaviors relating to the maintenance of transitive (i.e., linear) dominance hierarchies between elephant social groups despite the infrequent occurrence of contests over resources and lack of territorial behavior. Data collected from seven families of different rank demonstrate that dominant groups disproportionately use preferred habitats, limit their exposure to predation/conflict with humans by avoiding unprotected areas, and expend less energy than subordinate groups during the dry season. Hence, our data provide strong evidence of rank derived spatial partitioning in this migratory species. These behaviors, however, were not found during the wet season, indicating that spatial segregation of elephants is related to resource availability. Our results indicate the importance of protecting preexisting social mechanisms for mitigating the ecological impacts of high density in this species. This analysis provides an exemplar of how behavioral research in a socio-ecological framework can serve to identify factors salient to the persistence and management of at risk species or populations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Kenyan Office of the President and the KWS for permission to work in Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves and the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves’ County Councils, wardens, and rangers for their support of our work. KWS field personnel and veterinarians were essential for all radio collaring operations. The comments of Susan Alberts and two anonymous reviewers greatly helped to improve this manuscript. The experiments presented comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed. Save the Elephants donors funded the purchase of radio collars and the costs of field operations for this study. We thank the ESRI conservation program for donation of GIS software to Save the Elephants. Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation IRFP OISE-0502340 to GW and a James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative Award to WMG.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, 201 Wellman Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720-3112, USA

    G. Wittemyer & W. M. Getz

  2. Save the Elephants, P.O. Box 54667, Nairobi, Kenya

    G. Wittemyer, F. Vollrath & I. Douglas-Hamilton

  3. Mammal Research Institute, Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, 0002, South Africa

    W. M. Getz

  4. Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK

    F. Vollrath

  5. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California at Berkeley, 137 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720-3112, USA

    G. Wittemyer

Authors
  1. G. Wittemyer
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  4. I. Douglas-Hamilton
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to G. Wittemyer.

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Communicated by S. Alberts

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Fig. S6

Dominance rank category in relation to the seasonal ratio of LoCoH home range estimates and median daily distances. High-ranked groups (black circles) tend to demonstrate greater differentiation in seasonal range and movements than mid (gray triangles) and mid-low (white diamond) ranked groups. (DOC 38 kb)

Table S1

From Wittemyer and Getz et al. (2007), the dominance strengths of 20 family group matriarchs calculated from a dominance matrix in which 37% of pair-wise relationships had been observed (i.e., N = 20, 37% of possible relationships). Asterisks next to identification numbers indicate the matriarchs of groups in which a non-matriarchal female was collared (*M52 is the matriarch of collared individual M54, M2 is the matriarch of collared individual M5, R27 is the matriarch of collared individual R28, and M45 is the matriarch of collared individual M46). (DOC 33 kb)

Table S2

The average time spent within 1 km of permanent water and within protected areas among the seven focal groups during both the wet and dry season. Significant p values, post Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, are in boldface type. (DOC 28 kb)

Table S3

Home range size (defined using MCP—minimum convex polygon, fixed number of points LoCoH—local convex hull, and kernel home range estimation method) and core areas (defined using 50% kernel home ranges) for each of the seven studied groups during the dry season varied across groups. (DOC 33 kb)

Table S4

(a) Three hour movement distances in the wet and dry season. (b) Daily movement distances in the wet and dry season. (DOC 38 kb)

Table S5

Pair-wise comparison of hourly movements. Wilcoxon rank sum test χ 2 (Bonferroni correction for 21 multiple comparisons imply significance at 0.05 level when α < 0.00238) are presented for each pair, with significantly different pairs in boldface type. (DOC 34 kb)

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Wittemyer, G., Getz, W.M., Vollrath, F. et al. Social dominance, seasonal movements, and spatial segregation in African elephants: a contribution to conservation behavior. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 61, 1919–1931 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-007-0432-0

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