All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India

Abstract Male Asian elephants are known to adopt a high-risk high-gain foraging strategy by venturing into agricultural areas and feeding on nutritious crops in order to improve their reproductive fitness. We hypothesised that the high risks to survival posed by increasingly urbanising and often unp...

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Autores principales:	Nishant Srinivasaiah, Vinod Kumar, Srinivas Vaidyanathan, Raman Sukumar, Anindya Sinha
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2019
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/7ac36076890a4f6b8c6de74448e6951d
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:7ac36076890a4f6b8c6de74448e6951d2021-12-02T16:08:43ZAll-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India10.1038/s41598-019-45130-12045-2322https://doaj.org/article/7ac36076890a4f6b8c6de74448e6951d2019-07-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45130-1https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Male Asian elephants are known to adopt a high-risk high-gain foraging strategy by venturing into agricultural areas and feeding on nutritious crops in order to improve their reproductive fitness. We hypothesised that the high risks to survival posed by increasingly urbanising and often unpredictable production landscapes may necessitate the emergence of behavioural strategies that allow male elephants to persist in such landscapes. Using 1445 photographic records of 248 uniquely identified male Asian elephants over a 23-month period, we show that male Asian elephants display striking emergent behaviour, particularly the formation of stable, long-term all-male groups, typically in non-forested or human-modified and highly fragmented areas. They remained solitary or associated in mixed-sex groups, however, within forested habitats. These novel, large all-male associations, may constitute a unique life history strategy for male elephants in the high-risk but resource-rich production landscapes of southern India. This may be especially true for the adolescent males, which seemed to effectively improve their body condition by increasingly exploiting anthropogenic resources when in all-male groups. This observation further supports our hypothesis that such emergent behaviours are likely to constitute an adaptive strategy for male Asian elephants that may be forced to increasingly confront anthropogenically intrusive environments.Nishant SrinivasaiahVinod KumarSrinivas VaidyanathanRaman SukumarAnindya SinhaNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 9, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2019)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Nishant Srinivasaiah Vinod Kumar Srinivas Vaidyanathan Raman Sukumar Anindya Sinha All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India
description	Abstract Male Asian elephants are known to adopt a high-risk high-gain foraging strategy by venturing into agricultural areas and feeding on nutritious crops in order to improve their reproductive fitness. We hypothesised that the high risks to survival posed by increasingly urbanising and often unpredictable production landscapes may necessitate the emergence of behavioural strategies that allow male elephants to persist in such landscapes. Using 1445 photographic records of 248 uniquely identified male Asian elephants over a 23-month period, we show that male Asian elephants display striking emergent behaviour, particularly the formation of stable, long-term all-male groups, typically in non-forested or human-modified and highly fragmented areas. They remained solitary or associated in mixed-sex groups, however, within forested habitats. These novel, large all-male associations, may constitute a unique life history strategy for male elephants in the high-risk but resource-rich production landscapes of southern India. This may be especially true for the adolescent males, which seemed to effectively improve their body condition by increasingly exploiting anthropogenic resources when in all-male groups. This observation further supports our hypothesis that such emergent behaviours are likely to constitute an adaptive strategy for male Asian elephants that may be forced to increasingly confront anthropogenically intrusive environments.
format	article
author	Nishant Srinivasaiah Vinod Kumar Srinivas Vaidyanathan Raman Sukumar Anindya Sinha
author_facet	Nishant Srinivasaiah Vinod Kumar Srinivas Vaidyanathan Raman Sukumar Anindya Sinha
author_sort	Nishant Srinivasaiah
title	All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India
title_short	All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India
title_full	All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India
title_fullStr	All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India
title_full_unstemmed	All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India
title_sort	all-male groups in asian elephants: a novel, adaptive social strategy in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes of southern india
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2019
url	https://doaj.org/article/7ac36076890a4f6b8c6de74448e6951d
work_keys_str_mv	AT nishantsrinivasaiah allmalegroupsinasianelephantsanoveladaptivesocialstrategyinincreasinglyanthropogeniclandscapesofsouthernindia AT vinodkumar allmalegroupsinasianelephantsanoveladaptivesocialstrategyinincreasinglyanthropogeniclandscapesofsouthernindia AT srinivasvaidyanathan allmalegroupsinasianelephantsanoveladaptivesocialstrategyinincreasinglyanthropogeniclandscapesofsouthernindia AT ramansukumar allmalegroupsinasianelephantsanoveladaptivesocialstrategyinincreasinglyanthropogeniclandscapesofsouthernindia AT anindyasinha allmalegroupsinasianelephantsanoveladaptivesocialstrategyinincreasinglyanthropogeniclandscapesofsouthernindia
_version_	1718384477732864000

All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India

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