Matriarchs As Repositories of Social Knowledge in African Elephants

By K. McComb, C. Moss, S. Durant, Lucy Baker, Soila Sayialel. Science, 2001

622 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Developmental Biology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/15408c0e05ed32315165f2745723d5cbabc147a9

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Citations in the corpus

Relatedness structure and kin-biased foraging in the greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) (2002, background): “McComb et al. (2001) recently demonstrated that African elephant (Loxodonta africana) matriarchs act as repositories of social information for their group.”
Dangerously few liaisons: a review of mate-finding Allee effects (2009, background): “Similarly, the loss of older, more knowledgeable matriarchs is believed to result in reduced per capita reproductive success among the remaining members of African elephant groups (McComb et al. 2001).”
Use of Substitute Species in Conservation Biology (2005, background): “…1999; Andelman & Fagan 2000; Zacharias & Roff 2001; Sanderson et al. 2002; Caro et al. 2004) and those that use the response of one species or population to an environmental disturbance to predict the response of another to a similar disturbance (e.g., Oatley et al. 1992; McComb et al. 2001).”
A Survey of Statistical Network Models (2009, background): “” Subjects of subsequent studies ranged from social interactions of monks [259], to hierarchies of elephants [209; 303], to sexual relationships between adults of Colorado [176], to friendships amongst elementary school students [141; 299].”
Association patterns of African elephants in all-male groups: the role of age and genetic relatedness (2011, background): “The central role that older males play in male elephant social networks suggests that older males are sources of ecological and social knowledge in all-male elephant groups, just as older females are in family groups (McComb et al. 2001; Foley et al. 2008; Mutinda et al. 2011).”
Multilevel Societies of Female Sperm Whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the Atlantic and Pacific: Why Are They So Different? (2012, background): “…successful calf-rearing, was lowered for females in social units that had lost important members (Whitehead et al. 1997), as has been found with elephants (Loxodonta africana) that have a social structure similar to that of sperm whales (McComb et al. 2001; also see de Silva and Wittemyer 2012).”
The emerging significance of bioacoustics in animal species conservation (2010, background): “As an example, elephant families maintaining old matriarchs had greater reproductive success than families that did not, since among other factors, these old individuals preserved the entire tradition of social calls (McComb et al. 2001).”
Social cohesion in a hierarchically structured embayment population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (2009, background): “…breeding success (e.g. in red howler monkeys, Alouatta seniculus: Pope 2000) and information exchange (e.g. in African elephants, Elephas Maximus: McComb et al. 2001), or reduced predation risk (e.g. in delphinids, Gowans et al. 2008), aggression (e.g. in spider monkeys, Ateles geoffroyi:…”
Culture and conservation of non-humans with reference to whales and dolphins: review and new directions (2004, background): “In cultural societies, individuals with important cultural knowledge may have population significance far in excess of their reproductive capacities (McComb et al., 2001), and populations may be structured in significant ways by cultural knowledge and cultural habit.”
Social cohesion in yellow-bellied marmots is established through age and kin structuring (2010, positive): “Certain individuals may be especially important for maintaining group stability and structure (McComb et al. 2001; Flack et al. 2006), and their removal can have profound implications for conservation (McComb et al. 2001).”
A Comparison of Social Organization in Asian Elephants and African Savannah Elephants (2012, background): “2011; Zuberbühler, 2009) than social (McComb et al. 2001).”
Megagardeners of the forest - the role of elephants in seed dispersal (2011, background): “They keep track and predict the location of other members in their group (McComb et al., 2001; Bates et al., 2008), are aware of the expected onset of rains in locations up to 200 km away (Viljoen, 1989), and can remember where to find food and water in case of an extreme drought, even decades…”
Social network analysis of animal behaviour : a promising tool for the study of sociality (2008, background): “Besides being important in transfer, animals with high betweenness are likely to be important for group stability, and their removal (by death or dispersal) may fragment the group into smaller subgroups (McComb et al. 2001; Lusseau & Newman 2004; Flack et al. 2006).”
The socioecology of elephants: analysis of the processes creating multitiered social structures (2005, background): “Previous studies have provided evidence for inclusive fitness benefits derived from elephant sociality, in the form of allomother effects on calf survivorship (Lee 1987) and fitness benefits relating to matriarch social knowledge (McComb et al. 2001).”
Costs of group size: lower developmental and reproductive rates in larger groups of leaf monkeys (2008, background): “moderate (van Noordwijk and van Schaik 1999; McComb et al. 2001; Altmann and Alberts 2003) or even reversed (Cheney and”