Social structure, genetic relatedness, and dominance relationships in female Asian elephants in Nagarahole and Bandipur national parks, Southern India

Abstract

This thesis describes the first detailed quantitative study of female Asian elephant social organisation in India. Social organisation may be shaped by ecological factors and individual relationships, and understanding the relative roles of these factors in shaping animal societies has long been a central objective of mammalian behavioural research (Crook and Gartlan 1966, Clutton-Brock and Harvey 1977, Wrangham 1980). Individual relationships may further depend on inclusive fitness benefits, direct fitness benefits, and conflict from conspecifics. Using data collected over five years, between March 2009 and July 2014, on identified females from Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks (the Kabini population; see Vidya et al. 2014) in southern India, I studied some aspects of the social organisation of female Asian elephants and how they might be affected by ecological factors or individual relationships. Elephants offer a superb system for investigating the role of ecological factors and individual relationships on behaviour as they are socially advanced, inhabit diverse habitats, and possibly offer an opportunity for kin selection. Female Asian elephants live in matrilineal societies and show fission-fusion dynamics, which, in other species allow community members to split away or associate together in groups of different sizes in response to spatio-temporally varying resources. However, being long-lived species, elephants have to be studied over a long period so that their societies can be properly understood.