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12 results for “savanna elephant”
Elephant megacarcasses increase local nutrient pools in African savanna soils and plants
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Fire, elephants, and climate legacies enhance savanna resistance while impeding resilience
<p>Data accompanying the paper:</p> <p>L.M. Vermeulen, B. Verbist, K. Van Meerbeek, J. Slingsby, P.N. Bernardino, B. Somers. 2024. Fire, elephants, and climate legacies enhance savanna resistance while impeding resilience.</p>
Protecting the resource: an assessment of mitigation methods used to protect large trees from African elephant impact in a savanna system
<p>African elephants (<em>Loxodonta africana</em>) can alter the structural components of savanna ecosystems, often through the reduction of the large tree (>5 m height) cover component. Elephant impact can be amplified in small, protected areas, or areas where water is readily available to elephants. One management option is to protect large trees directly using applied mitigation methods to limit elephant impact. In this paper, we assessed and compared the effectiveness and logistical requirements of four mitigation methods that have been applied to protect large trees from elephant impact in South Africa's Greater Kruger National Park - namely African honeybees (<em>Apis mellifera scutellata</em>) in beehives; creosote oil in glass jars, concrete pyramids arranged in circles around trees, as well as wire-netting the trees' main stems. For each method, elephant impact levels and tree mortality rates were measured over a 2–5-year period depending on the method in use. Sample sizes ranged from 43 to 59 trees per mitigation method, with a comparable control, which was a tree of the same species and morphological dimensions but lacking any mitigation application. Beehives were the most effective method at reducing tree loss, significantly reducing tree mortality from 34% (6.8%/year) in control trees to only 10% (2%/year) over the five-year experimental period. However, beehives were the most expensive method to apply to a tree, although this cost can be compensated through honey sales. Concrete pyramids reduced tree loss when the combined pyramid radius was >1.5 m in length, whilst wire-netting was effective against bark-stripping by elephants but was still vulnerable to heavier forms of impact such as uprooting and stem snapping. Creosote jars did not prevent elephants from impacting treated trees. Our results provide managers with a toolkit for protecting large trees against elephant impact, commenting on both the efficacy and the logistical constraints for each method.</p>
Data from: Simulated poaching affects global connectivity and efficiency in social networks of African savanna elephants—An exemplar of how human disturbance impacts group-living species
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Protecting the resource: an assessment of mitigation methods used to protect large trees from African elephant impact in a savanna system
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Genetic connectivity and population structure of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Tanzania
<p>Increasing human population growth, exurban development, and associated habitat fragmentation is accelerating the isolation of many natural areas and wildlife populations across the planet. In Tanzania, rapid and ongoing habitat conversion to agriculture has severed many of the country's former wildlife corridors between protected areas. To identify historically-linked protected areas, we investigated the genetic structure and gene flow of African savanna elephants in Tanzania using microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA markers in 688 individuals. Our results indicate distinct population genetic structure within and between ecosystems across Tanzania, and reveal important priority areas for connectivity conservation. Elephants sampled from the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem appear marginally, yet significantly isolated from elephants sampled from the greater Serengeti ecosystem (mean FST = 0.03), where two distinct subpopulations were identified.Unexpectedly, elephants in the Lake Manyara region appear to be more closely related to those across the East African Rift wall in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area than they are to the neighboring Tarangire subpopulations. We concluded that the Rift wall has had a negligible influence on genetic differentiation up to this point, but differentiation may accelerate in the future because of ongoing loss of corridors in the area. Interestingly, relatively high genetic similarity was found between elephants in Tarangire and Ruaha although they are separated by >400 km. In southern Tanzania, there was little evidence of female-mediated gene flow between Ruaha and Selous, probably due to the presence of the Udzungwa Mountains between them. Despite observing evidence of significant isolation, the populations of elephants we examined generally exhibited robust levels of allelic richness (mean AR = 9.96), heterozygosity (mean µHE = 0.73), and effective population sizes (mean Ne = 148). Our results may inform efforts to restore wildlife corridors between protected areas in Tanzania in order to facilitate gene flow for long-term survival of elephants and other species.</p>
Data from: New evidence for hybrid zones of forest and savanna elephants in Central and West Africa
The African elephant consists of forest and savanna subspecies. Both subspecies are highly endangered due to severe poaching and habitat loss, and knowledge of their population structure is vital to their conservation. Previous studies have demonstrated marked genetic and morphological differences between forest and savanna elephants and despite extensive sampling, genetic evidence of hybridization between them has been restricted largely to a few hybrids in the Garamba region of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Here we present new genetic data on hybridization from previously unsampled areas of Africa. Novel statistical methods applied to these data identify 46 hybrid samples - many more than have been previously identified - only two of which are from the Garamba region. The remaining 44 are from three other geographically-distinct locations: a major hybrid zone along the border of the DRC and Uganda, a second potential hybrid zone in Central African Republic, and a smaller fraction of hybrids in the Pendjari-Arli complex of West Africa. Most of the hybrids show evidence of interbreeding over more than one generation, demonstrating that hybrids are fertile. Mitochondrial and Y chromosome data demonstrate that the hybridization is bidirectional, involving males and females from both subspecies. We hypothesize that the hybrid zones may have been facilitated by poaching and habitat modification. The localized geography and rarity of hybrid zones, their possible facilitation from human pressures, and the high divergence and genetic distinctness of forest and savanna elephants throughout their ranges, are consistent with calls for separate species classification.
Data from: Interplay of physical and social drivers of movement in male African savanna elephants
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Data from: New evidence for hybrid zones of forest and savanna elephants in Central and West Africa
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Genetic connectivity and population structure of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Tanzania
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Data from: Woody plant biomass and carbon exchange depend on elephant-fire interactions across a productivity gradient in African savanna
Elephants and fire are individually well-known disturbance agents within savanna ecosystems, but their interactive role in governing tree-cover dynamics and savanna–forest biome boundaries remains unresolved. Of central importance are the mechanisms by which elephants vs. fire affect tree biomass and cover, and how – over long time periods – both factors interact with rainfall and soils to govern tree biomass and carbon dynamics. Here, we evaluated the response of woody vegetation to 56 years of fire manipulation in South Africa's Kruger National Park, with three fire regimes (annual, triennial and unburned) replicated across a productivity gradient and subject to two periods of contrasting elephant abundances (generated by the cessation of culling in 1994). Higher fire frequencies had a negative effect on woody biomass in the low-elephant period, but this effect was weak to negligible in the high-elephant period as the difference among fire treatments diminished. Moreover, elephants removed increasing amounts of woody biomass as productivity increased across study sites, but fire did not. We infer that elephant-induced tree mortality could overcome increases in woody-plant productivity, while fire-induced mortality alone could not. Elephants caused woody-plant carbon to shift from a sink to a source; this effect was independent of fire treatment, with highest rates of net carbon removal in the wettest and most productive site. Synthesis. Our results reveal a context-dependent interaction between fire and elephants as disturbance agents in savanna: the influence of fire on woody plants was sensitive to the abundance of elephants and diminished with increased plant productivity. In contrast, elephants were capable of shifting landscapes from relatively dense woodland to open savanna, even in unburned sites, and exerted strong impacts irrespective of site conditions and plant productivity.
Data from: Woody plant biomass and carbon exchange depend on elephant-fire interactions across a productivity gradient in African savanna
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