The socioecology of elephants: analysis of the processes creating multitiered social structures

By George Wittemyer, I. Douglas-Hamilton, Wayne M. Getz. 2005

594 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper, we investigate the formation and function of the multilevelled, fission–fusion social structure in a free-ranging African elephant, Loxodonta africana, population. We quantitatively identified the existence of four social tiers by using cluster analysis on individual association data. We assessed the effects of season and study period on social structuring and levels of cohesion within and among social units. We found that second-tier units, potentially the equivalent of the ‘family’, were stable across seasonal periods but the number of units increased as the study progressed and the population grew. It appears that these units were sufficiently small not to be influenced by ecologically related factors, such as resource competition, that might otherwise lead to them splitting. On the other hand, third- and fourthtier units were significantly affected by season in a way that suggests a trade-off between ecological costs (e.g. from resource competition) and different social and ecological benefits (e.g. from predator defence, territoriality, knowledge sharing and rearing of young). Age structure also appeared to influence this multitiered social organization. The size of second-tier social units was significantly affected by the age of matriarchs: units lead by matriarchs likely to be grandmothers (i.e. females 35 years and older) were significantly larger than those lead by younger matriarchs. We present a conceptual framework for understanding the emergence of multiple-tier social structure from interactions driven by socioecological processes. This study is the first to use rigorous quantitative methods to statistically show the existence of four hierarchical tiers of social organization in a nonhuman animal. Additionally, our results elucidate the role that ecological processes play in producing complex social structures.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f62eaef3f405c8409cc3582e9d2b8ae6ed9f1fba

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Citations in the corpus

Behavioural reactions of elephants towards a dying and deceased matriarch (2006, background): “The members of the same families, as determined from the association analysis by Wittemyer et al. (2005b) , show high scores of association of the order of 0.61– 0.89 in this period.”
Fission‐Fusion Dynamics (2008, background): “[Moss and Lee n.d.; Wittemyer, Douglas-Hamilton, and Getz 2005], and spotted hyenas [Holekamp et al. 1997]).”
Potential banana skins in animal social network analysis (2009, background): “…buffalos (Syncerus caffer) (Cross et al. 2004), bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.) (Lusseau and Newman 2004), african elephants (Loxodonta africana) (Wittemyer et al. 2005), pig-tail macaques (Macaca nemestrina) (Flack et al. 2006) and Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) (Croft et al. 2006).”
Evolutionary determinants of modular societies in colobines (2010, background): “Thus, African elephants (Loxodonta africana) regularly form large aggregations of stable subunits consisting of female bonded family groups (Moss and Poole 1983; Wittemyer et al. 2005).”
Time as a constraint on group size in spider monkeys (2006, unknown): “Other species that have a similar multilayered society include hyenas (Holekamp et al. 1997), elephants (Wittemyer et al. 2005), bottlenose dolphins (Connor et al. 2001), bats (Kerth and König 1999), buffalos (Cross et al. 2005) and humans (Rodseth et al. 1991).”
SOCPROG programs: analysing animal social structures (2009, unknown): “It also provides objective means of identifying the cutoff: maximum modularity (Newman 2004) and the “knots” of a knot diagram ( Wittemyer et al. 2005; Fig. 3).”
Fission–fusion dynamics in wild giraffes may be driven by kinship, spatial overlap and individual social preferences (2013, background): “2005), whereas males are motivated more by the distribution and social organization of females (Wittemyer et al. 2005; Wolf et al. 2007).”
A comparative network analysis of social style in macaques (2011, background): “The recent development of the network approach has helped us make significant progress in our understanding of social organizations in taxa as diverse as bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, African elephants, Loxondota africana, bats and primates (Kerth & König 1999; Lusseau & Newman 2004; Witt”
The social dynamics of southern resident killer whales and conservation implications for this endangered population (2009, background): “…several large mammal populations (e.g. Packer et al. 1990; Baird & Whitehead 2000; Fernando & Lande 2000; Durant et al. 2004; Sinha et al. 2005; Wittemyer et al. 2005; Sundaresan et al. 2007), and have proved invaluable in assessing conservation priorities and modelling extinction risks for…”
Multilevel social organization and space use in reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) (2014, background): “2012), it is still unclear whether giraffe exhibit higher levels of social structure, as seen in some other fission–fusion species (Symington 1990; Wittemyer et al. 2005; Wolf et al. 2007; Fortuna et al. 2009; Mourier et al. 2012).”
Social cohesion in a hierarchically structured embayment population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (2009, background): “2008), as well as within other species that have fission–fusion social systems (Boinski 1999; Wittemyer et al. 2005; Sundaresan et al. 2007).”
Association patterns of African elephants in all-male groups: the role of age and genetic relatedness (2011, background): “…that this would be so because the risks associated with sparring, competitive feeding interactions or cooperative defence from predators may create a pattern of maleemale associations favouring kin-based alliances (Griffiths & Armstrong 2002; Wittemyer et al. 2005; Mathot & Giraldeau 2010).”
The movement of African elephants in a human‐dominated land‐use mosaic (2009, background): “…studies of home range and/or habitat selection (Lindeque & Lindeque, 1991; Galanti et al., 2006; Legett, 2006) and more recently, social behaviour (Wittemyer et al., 2005), the application of this technology has enormous potential to contribute to understanding the interaction of people with wild…”
Animal social networks: an introduction (2009, methodology): “For example, association matrix methods were used by Vonhof et al. (2004) and Wittemyer et al. (2005) to find multiple levels of social structure in bats, Thyroptera tricolor, and elephants, Loxodonta africana, respectively, while Wolf et al. (2007) used an explicitly network-based approach to fin”
Nonrandom association patterns at northern long- eared bat maternity roosts (2007, background): “Finally, fission and fusion can occur among multiple hierarchical units of organization (e.g., African elephants, Loxodonta africana (Blumenbach, 1797), may have up to five social tiers; Wittemyer et al. 2005 ).”