SciAm: Elephant daughters step up when the matriarchs are poached.

Who doesn't love elephants? Great short article (20 paragraphs) in Scientific American on how the social organizations of elephants are held together against poaching.

Elephant Daughters Step Up to Replace Murdered Mothers. After poachers kill matriarchs, daughters try to rebuild social bonds in their groups

Old matriarchs are the leaders of their families, deciding when, where and with whom to group. Their choices are responsible for the emergence of these tiers of social contact. So what happens when they are killed?

Populations changed, but groups held steady

Over the 16 years of our study, the Samburu population became significantly younger. Only 30% of the elephants in the recent period were present from the beginning of the study. Yet despite these changes, family and bond groups were as clearly distinguishable after poaching as they were before the disruption.

Even more surprising was how young females recreated these social tiers. We compared the records of mothers’ relationships with one another before the poaching to their daughters’ relationships after the poaching. It turned out daughters largely maintained the same relationships across families, even if their mothers were dead.

In some disrupted groups, females reached into their bond or clan groups from years earlier to reconstruct new groups. Sometimes this resulted in family groups that comprised nonrelatives.

From previous genetic work in the population, we know that elephants sometimes create family where they have none. We watched this process anew over the last few years as poaching intensified and females reached into their mothers’ extended networks. For example, the once-dominant Planets bond group—which previously had several matriarchs over 50 years old—now comprises two young mothers named Europa and Haumea and some surviving calves (Europa is the oldest mother at 23). Their new bond group includes the Flowers, elephants that were only clan group affiliates in the prepoaching years.

This work is showing us that elephant bond and clan groups may act as important buffers from social collapse, providing surviving females with a framework from which to build their own networks. The legacy of elephant mothers lives on in their daughters’ social choices.