Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana)
In long-lived social species, older individuals can provide fitness benefits to their groupmates through the imparting of ecological knowledge. Research in this area has largely focused on females in matrilineal societies where, for example, older female African savannah elephants (Loxodonta african...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7471917 2023-05-15T17:53:49+02:00 Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) Allen, Connie R. B. Brent, Lauren J. N. Motsentwa, Thatayaone Weiss, Michael N. Croft, Darren P. 2020-09-03 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471917/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32883968 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70682-y en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471917/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32883968 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70682-y © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70682-y 2020-09-13T00:22:09Z In long-lived social species, older individuals can provide fitness benefits to their groupmates through the imparting of ecological knowledge. Research in this area has largely focused on females in matrilineal societies where, for example, older female African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) are most effective at making decisions crucial to herd survival, and old post-reproductive female resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) lead collective movements in hunting grounds. In contrast, little is known about the role of older males as leaders in long-lived social species. By analysing leadership patterns of all-male African savannah elephant traveling groups along elephant pathways in Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, Botswana, we found that the oldest males were more likely to lead collective movements. Our results challenge the assumption that older male elephants are redundant in the population and raise concerns over the biased removal of old bulls that currently occurs in both legal trophy hunting and illegal poaching. Selective harvesting of older males could have detrimental effects on the wider elephant society through loss of leaders crucial to younger male navigation in unknown, risky environments. Text Orca Orcinus orca PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 10 1 |
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Article Allen, Connie R. B. Brent, Lauren J. N. Motsentwa, Thatayaone Weiss, Michael N. Croft, Darren P. Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) |
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In long-lived social species, older individuals can provide fitness benefits to their groupmates through the imparting of ecological knowledge. Research in this area has largely focused on females in matrilineal societies where, for example, older female African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) are most effective at making decisions crucial to herd survival, and old post-reproductive female resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) lead collective movements in hunting grounds. In contrast, little is known about the role of older males as leaders in long-lived social species. By analysing leadership patterns of all-male African savannah elephant traveling groups along elephant pathways in Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, Botswana, we found that the oldest males were more likely to lead collective movements. Our results challenge the assumption that older male elephants are redundant in the population and raise concerns over the biased removal of old bulls that currently occurs in both legal trophy hunting and illegal poaching. Selective harvesting of older males could have detrimental effects on the wider elephant society through loss of leaders crucial to younger male navigation in unknown, risky environments. |
format |
Text |
author |
Allen, Connie R. B. Brent, Lauren J. N. Motsentwa, Thatayaone Weiss, Michael N. Croft, Darren P. |
author_facet |
Allen, Connie R. B. Brent, Lauren J. N. Motsentwa, Thatayaone Weiss, Michael N. Croft, Darren P. |
author_sort |
Allen, Connie R. B. |
title |
Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) |
title_short |
Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) |
title_full |
Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) |
title_fullStr |
Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) |
title_full_unstemmed |
Importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) |
title_sort |
importance of old bulls: leaders and followers in collective movements of all-male groups in african savannah elephants (loxodonta africana) |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471917/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32883968 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70682-y |
genre |
Orca Orcinus orca |
genre_facet |
Orca Orcinus orca |
op_source |
Sci Rep |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7471917/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32883968 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70682-y |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70682-y |
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Scientific Reports |
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10 |
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