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Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults
Compensatory social behavior in nonhuman animals following maternal loss has been documented, but understanding of how orphans allocate bonding to reconstruct their social networks is limited. Successful social integration may be critical to survival and reproduction for highly social species and, t...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5663962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29089603 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14712-2 |
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author | Goldenberg, Shifra Z. Wittemyer, George |
author_facet | Goldenberg, Shifra Z. Wittemyer, George |
author_sort | Goldenberg, Shifra Z. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Compensatory social behavior in nonhuman animals following maternal loss has been documented, but understanding of how orphans allocate bonding to reconstruct their social networks is limited. Successful social integration may be critical to survival and reproduction for highly social species and, therefore, may be tied to population persistence. We examined the social partners involved in affiliative interactions of female orphans and non-orphans in an elephant population in Samburu, northern Kenya that experienced heightened adult mortality driven by drought and intense ivory poaching. We contrasted partners across different competitive contexts to gain insight to the influence of resource availability on social interactions. Though the number of partners did not differ between orphans and non-orphans, their types of social partners did. Orphans interacted with sisters and matriarchs less while feeding than did non-orphans, but otherwise their affiliates were similar. While resting under spatially concentrated shade, orphans had markedly less access to mature adults but affiliated instead with sisters, bulls, and age mates. Orphan propensity to strengthen bonds with non-dominant animals appears to offer routes to social integration following maternal loss, but lack of interaction with adult females suggests orphans may experience decreased resource access and associated fitness costs in this matriarchal society. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5663962 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56639622017-11-08 Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults Goldenberg, Shifra Z. Wittemyer, George Sci Rep Article Compensatory social behavior in nonhuman animals following maternal loss has been documented, but understanding of how orphans allocate bonding to reconstruct their social networks is limited. Successful social integration may be critical to survival and reproduction for highly social species and, therefore, may be tied to population persistence. We examined the social partners involved in affiliative interactions of female orphans and non-orphans in an elephant population in Samburu, northern Kenya that experienced heightened adult mortality driven by drought and intense ivory poaching. We contrasted partners across different competitive contexts to gain insight to the influence of resource availability on social interactions. Though the number of partners did not differ between orphans and non-orphans, their types of social partners did. Orphans interacted with sisters and matriarchs less while feeding than did non-orphans, but otherwise their affiliates were similar. While resting under spatially concentrated shade, orphans had markedly less access to mature adults but affiliated instead with sisters, bulls, and age mates. Orphan propensity to strengthen bonds with non-dominant animals appears to offer routes to social integration following maternal loss, but lack of interaction with adult females suggests orphans may experience decreased resource access and associated fitness costs in this matriarchal society. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC5663962/ /pubmed/29089603 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14712-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 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/. |
spellingShingle | Article Goldenberg, Shifra Z. Wittemyer, George Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
title | Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
title_full | Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
title_fullStr | Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
title_full_unstemmed | Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
title_short | Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
title_sort | orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5663962/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29089603 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14712-2 |
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