کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
2418699 1104354 2006 11 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Dominance rank relationships among wild female African elephants, Loxodonta africana
موضوعات مرتبط
علوم زیستی و بیوفناوری علوم کشاورزی و بیولوژیک علوم دامی و جانورشناسی
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Dominance rank relationships among wild female African elephants, Loxodonta africana
چکیده انگلیسی

Socioecological models of the evolution of female-bonded societies predict a relation between resource distribution and the nature of female affiliative and dominance relationships. Species that mainly rely on abundant, widely distributed resources, like African savanna elephants, are predicted to have unresolved dominance hierarchies and poorly differentiated female social relationships. Contrary to this prediction, female elephants have well-differentiated social relationships; however, little is known about the nature of their dominance rank relationships. Here we present the first quantitative analysis of dominance relationships within ‘family’ groups of adult female elephants in two wild populations: one in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, and another in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. We tested three possibilities, that female elephants: (1) are egalitarian, (2) have linear, nepotistic hierarchies, or (3) have linear age/size-ordered hierarchies. Our results best support the third outcome: dominance rank relationships were transitive within families and highly asymmetrical within dyads, such that older, larger females consistently dominated smaller, younger females. We discuss the implications of this result for understanding the evolution of female social relationships.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Animal Behaviour - Volume 71, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 117–127
نویسندگان
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