3 - Female Social Life

Summary

Female gregariousness is a hallmark of elephants and many social mammals. This chapter examines the ecological and evolutionary explanations for sociality among elephants. Social life comes with costs (competition, subordination) and benefits (protection, knowledge) that differ across ecological contexts. The fundamental selective pressures and trade-offs represented by varied resource distributions and predation or hunting risks are discussed, taking pains to differentiate between species and populations. The influence of seasonality on resource availability, and in turn on fission-fusion dynamics and dominance interactions, provides a rich space of possible social interactions at multiple levels of organization and complexity. Disruptions to elephant societies, either because of deaths or management interventions, provide insights into both the fragilities and resilience of their social systems.