Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/31188
Appears in Collections:Biological and Environmental Sciences Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: Climatic and Resource Determinants of Forest Elephant Movements
Author(s): Beirne, Christopher
Meier, Amelia C
Brumagin, Gabriela
Jasperse-Sjolander, Liam
Lewis, Matthew
Masseloux, Juliana
Myers, Kimberly
Fay, Mike
Okouyi, Joseph
White, Lee J T
Poulsen, John R
Keywords: behavior
path segmentation
resource availability
human-elephant conflict
individual variation
Issue Date: Apr-2020
Date Deposited: 26-May-2020
Citation: Beirne C, Meier AC, Brumagin G, Jasperse-Sjolander L, Lewis M, Masseloux J, Myers K, Fay M, Okouyi J, White LJT & Poulsen JR (2020) Climatic and Resource Determinants of Forest Elephant Movements. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8, Art. No.: 96. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.00096
Abstract: As a keystone megafaunal species, African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) influence the structure and composition of tropical forests. Determining the links between food resources, environmental conditions and elephant movement behavior is crucial to understanding their habitat requirements and their effects on the ecosystem, particularly in the face of poaching and global change. We investigate whether fruit abundance or climate most strongly influence forest elephant movement behavior at the landscape scale in Gabon. Trained teams of “elephant trackers” performed daily fruit availability and dietary composition surveys over a year within two relatively pristine and intact protected areas. With data from 100 in-depth field follows of 28 satellite-collared elephants and remotely sensed environmental layers, we use linear mixed-effects models to assess the effects of sites, seasons, focal elephant identification, elephant diet, and fruit availability on elephant movement behavior at monthly and 3-day time scales. At the month-level, rainfall, and to a lesser extent fruit availability, most strongly predicted the proportion of time elephants spent in long, directionally persistent movements. Thus, even elephants in moist tropical rainforests show seasonal behavioral phenotypes linked to rainfall. At the follow-level (2–4 day intervals), relative support for both rainfall and fruit availability decreased markedly, suggesting that at finer spatial scales forest elephants make foraging decisions largely based on other factors not directly assessed here. Focal elephant identity explained the majority of the variance in the data, and there was strong support for interindividual variation in behavioral responses to rainfall. Taken together, this highlights the importance of approaches which follow individuals through space and time. The links between climate, resource availability and movement behavior provide important insights into the behavioral ecology of forest elephants that can contribute to understanding their role as seed dispersers, improving management of populations, and informing development of solutions to human-elephant conflict.
DOI Link: 10.3389/fevo.2020.00096
Rights: © 2020 Beirne, Meier, Brumagin, Jasperse-Sjolander, Lewis, Masseloux, Myers, Fay, Okouyi, White and Poulsen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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