Associations, dominance interactions, and musth in male Asian elephants in Nagarahole and Bandipur national parks, southern India

Abstract

This thesis examines the associations and dominance interactions of adult and subadult male Asian elephants and explores how female presence and musth affect these associations and interactions. In polygynous species, the number of sexually mature males is usually greater than the available reproductive opportunities at any point in time and, hence, males are expected to compete with each other for acquiring access to receptive females (Emlen and Oring 1977). Male societies and individual relationships are, therefore, expected to be shaped strongly by their effects on the males‟ current or future prospects of reproductive success. Asian elephants have a polygynous mating system and show female philopatry and male dispersal (Sukumar 1989, Desai and Johnsingh 1995, Vidya and Sukumar 2005). Female elephants are rarely receptive because of their long gestation period and offspring dependency after birth. Given their long lifespan, the possibly long gap between sexual maturity and reproductive competitiveness of males, strong competition for matings because of the unavailability of females, and the phenomenon of musth, Asian elephants provide an interesting system to study male association and competition and how they change with age. I examined male associations and dominance in the Kabini population of Asian elephants (ranging in Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks; see Vidya et al. 2014), in which we have identified a large number of individuals and monitored them over a long term.