Shannon Graeme, Cordes Line S, Slotow Rob, Moss Cynthia, McComb Karen
School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor LL57 2UW, UK.
School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor LL59 5AB, UK.
Animals (Basel). 2022 Feb 17;12(4):495. doi: 10.3390/ani12040495.
The transmission of reliable information between individuals is crucial for group-living animals. This is particularly the case for cognitively advanced mammals with overlapping generations that acquire detailed social and ecological knowledge over long lifetimes. Here, we directly compare the ecological knowledge of elephants from two populations, with radically different developmental histories, to test whether profound social disruption affects their ability to assess predatory threat. Matriarchs (≤50 years of age) and their family groups received playbacks of three lions versus a single lion roaring. The family groups in the natural Amboseli population (Kenya) reliably assessed the greater predatory threat presented by three lions roaring versus one. However, in the socially disrupted Pilanesberg population (South Africa), no fine-scale distinctions were made between the numbers of roaring lions. Our results suggest that the removal of older and more experienced individuals in highly social species, such as elephants, is likely to impact the acquisition of ecological knowledge by younger group members, particularly through the lack of opportunity for social learning and cultural transmission of knowledge. This is likely to be exacerbated by the trauma experienced by juvenile elephants that witnessed the culling of family members and were translocated to new reserves. With increasing levels of anthropogenic disturbance, it is important that conservation practitioners consider the crucial role that population structure and knowledge transfer plays in the functioning and resilience of highly social and long-lived species.
个体之间可靠信息的传递对于群居动物至关重要。对于具有重叠世代、在漫长生命中获取详细社会和生态知识的认知能力较强的哺乳动物来说尤其如此。在此，我们直接比较了来自两个具有截然不同发育历史的象群的生态知识，以测试深刻的社会破坏是否会影响它们评估捕食威胁的能力。年长母象（年龄≤50岁）及其家族群体收听了三头狮子与一头狮子咆哮声的回放。肯尼亚安博塞利自然种群中的家族群体能够可靠地评估三头狮子咆哮声与一头狮子咆哮声所带来的更大捕食威胁。然而，在社会结构被破坏的南非匹林斯堡种群中，对于咆哮狮子的数量没有做出精细区分。我们的结果表明，在诸如大象这样的高度社会化物种中，移除年龄较大且经验更丰富的个体可能会影响年轻群体成员对生态知识的获取，特别是由于缺乏社会学习和知识文化传承的机会。目睹家庭成员被猎杀并被转移到新保护区的幼年大象所经历的创伤可能会加剧这种情况。随着人为干扰程度的增加，保护工作者认识到种群结构和知识传递在高度社会化和长寿物种的功能及恢复力中所起的关键作用非常重要。
