We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2024
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.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
