Srinivasaiah, Nishant M and Anand, Vijay D and Vaidyanathan, Srinivas and Sinha, Anindya (2012) Usual populations, unusual individuals: Insights into the behaviour and management of Asian elephants in fragmented landscapes. PLoS One, 7 (8). e42571. ISSN 1932-6203
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| Abstract: | Background: A dearth in understanding the behavior of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at the scale of populations and individuals has left important management issues, particularly related to human-elephant conflict (HEC), unresolved. Evaluation of differences in behavior and decision-making among individual elephants across groups in response to changing local ecological settings is essential to fill this gap in knowledge and to improve our approaches towards the management and conservation of elephants. Methodology/Principal Findings: We hypothesized certain behavioral decisions that would be made by Asian elephants as reflected in their residence time and movement rates, time-activity budgets, social interactions and group dynamics in response to resource availability and human disturbance in their habitat. This study is based on 200 h of behavioral observations on 60 individually identified elephants and a 184-km2 grid-based survey of their natural and anthropogenic habitats within and outside the Bannerghatta National Park, southern India during the dry season. At a general population level, the behavioral decisions appeared to be guided by the gender, age and group-type of the elephants. At the individual level, the observed variation could be explained only by the idiosyncratic behaviors of individuals and that of their associating conspecific individuals. Recursive partitioning classification trees for residence time of individual elephants indicated that the primary decisions were taken by individuals, independently of their above-mentioned biological and ecological attributes. Conclusions/Significance: Decision-making by Asian elephants thus appears to be determined at two levels, that of the population and, more importantly, the individual. Models based on decision-making by individual elephants have the potential to predict conflict in fragmented landscapes that, in turn, could aid in mitigating HEC. Thus, we must target individuals, in addition to populations, in our efforts to manage and conserve this threatened species, particularly in humandominated landscapes. |
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| Item Type: | Journal Paper |
| Subjects: | School of Natural and Engineering Sciences > Animal Behaviour School of Natural and Engineering Sciences > Conservation Biology Doctoral Programme > PhD Scholar Publications |
| Divisions: | Schools > Natural Sciences and Engineering |
| Date Deposited: | 13 Mar 2013 07:06 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2021 09:56 |
| Official URL: | http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137... |
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| Funders: | Department of Science and Technology, Government of India |
| Projects: | UNSPECIFIED |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0042571 |
| URI: | http://eprints.nias.res.in/id/eprint/353 |
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