ArticleScientific reports2017
Orphaned female elephant social bonds reflect lack of access to mature adults.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Knowledge transmission, culture and the consequences of social disruption in wild elephants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Early-life paternal relationships predict adult female survival in wild baboons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Early-life paternal relationships predict adult female survival in wild baboons.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Environmental, sex-specific and genetic determinants of infant social behaviour in a wild primate.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Elephants and algorithms: a review of the current and future role of AI in elephant monitoring.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Review
- Early life adversities and lifelong health outcomes: A review of the literature on large, social, long-lived nonhuman mammals.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Early life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on survival in a wild primate.Science advances · 2023Article
- Identifying the Effects of Social Disruption through Translocation on African Elephants (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Article
- Social support correlates with glucocorticoid concentrations in wild African elephant orphans.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Acknowledging the Relevance of Elephant Sensory Perception to Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- Social Disruption Impairs Predatory Threat Assessment in African Elephants.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Simulated poaching affects global connectivity and efficiency in social networks of African savanna elephants-An exemplar of how human disturbance impacts group-living species.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Orphaning stunts growth in wild African elephants.Conservation physiology · 2022Article
- Article
- Article
- Maternal death and offspring fitness in multiple wild primates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Social determinants of health and survival in humans and other animals.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2020Review
- Strongylid infection varies with age, sex, movement and social factors in wild African elephants.Parasitology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Compensatory social behavior in nonhuman animals following maternal loss has been documented, but understanding of how orphans allocate bonding to reconstruct their social networks is limited. Successful social integration may be critical to survival and reproduction for highly social species and, therefore, may be tied to population persistence. We examined the social partners involved in affiliative interactions of female orphans and non-orphans in an elephant population in Samburu, northern Kenya that experienced heightened adult mortality driven by drought and intense ivory poaching. We contrasted partners across different competitive contexts to gain insight to the influence of resource availability on social interactions. Though the number of partners did not differ between orphans and non-orphans, their types of social partners did. Orphans interacted with sisters and matriarchs less while feeding than did non-orphans, but otherwise their affiliates were similar. While resting under spatially concentrated shade, orphans had markedly less access to mature adults but affiliated instead with sisters, bulls, and age mates. Orphan propensity to strengthen bonds with non-dominant animals appears to offer routes to social integration following maternal loss, but lack of interaction with adult females suggests orphans may experience decreased resource access and associated fitness costs in this matriarchal society.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.