Interplay of physical and social drivers of movement in male African savanna elephants

Despite extensive research into the behavioral ecology of free-ranging animal groups, questions remain about how group members integrate information about their physical and social surroundings. This is because a) tracking of multiple group members is limited to a few easily manageable species; and b) the tools to simultaneously quantify physical and social influences on an individual’s movement remain challenging, especially across large geographic scales. A relevant example of a widely-ranging species with a complex social structure and of conservation concern is the African savanna elephant. We evaluate highly synchronized GPS tracks from five male elephants in Etosha National Park in Namibia by incorporating their dynamic social landscape into an established resource selection model. The fitted model predicts movement patterns based simultaneously on the physical landscape (e.g., repeated visitation of waterholes) and the social landscape (e.g., avoidance of a dominant male). Combin..., Study subjects and the social landscape: The five individuals considered in this study belong to a large elephant subpopulation residing in the northeastern region of Etosha National Park, Namibia. As a part of a different research effort, these individuals were classified into several age, dominance, social, and reproductive categories (O’Connell-Rodwell et al. 2011; O’Connell et al. 2024a). The age structure in this population was determined on the basis of several morphological features and can be found in the original publication (O’Connell-Rodwell et al. 2011; O’Connell et al. 2022).  The dominance categories are reported from a population-level, ordinal dominance hierarchy based on the frequency of agonistic dyadic interactions (i.e., displacement) observed during all-occurrence sampling, over multiple field seasons (O’Connell-Rodwell et al. 2024a). The social categories were approximated using social network analysis (i.e., eigenvector centrality—an index expressing how influenti..., , # Data package for evaluating the interplay of physical and social drivers of movement in male African savanna elephants [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qm3 ](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qm3) ## Description of the data and file structure **READ ME TEXT FILE for BEHECO-2023-0350.R2 (**[https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arae091)](https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arae091) This data package is associated with the manuscript BEHECO-2023-0350.R2, titled *Interplay of physical and social drivers of movement in male African savanna elephants.*\" The code in CodeDemo.nb (a.k.a. 'working' notebook), written in Wolfram language, uses functions from a separate code package, Movement.wl, also provided. The CodeDemo notebook demonstrates how these functions were applied to the elephant movement and physical landscape data. Both Movement.wl and the various input files (see below) are assumed to reside in the same directory as CodeDemo.nb. The. The elephant movement data are not provided...尽管针对野生自由活动动物群体的行为生态学已开展了大量研究，但关于群体成员如何整合其物理与社会环境信息的问题仍未得到解答。这是因为：a) 对多个群体成员的追踪仅局限于少数易于开展研究的物种；b) 同时量化物理与社会因素对个体移动影响的工具仍存在挑战，尤其是在大地理尺度下。 具有复杂社会结构且受保护关注的广布物种的典型案例之一，是非洲稀树草原象。本研究对纳米比亚埃托沙国家公园中5头雄性大象的高同步性GPS（全球定位系统，Global Positioning System）追踪数据进行分析，将动态社会环境纳入已有的资源选择模型中。拟合后的模型可同时基于物理环境（例如反复造访水源地）与社会环境（例如规避优势雄性）预测移动模式。Com..., 研究对象与社会环境：本研究涉及的5头个体隶属于纳米比亚埃托沙国家公园东北部的大型大象亚种群。作为另一项研究工作的一部分，这些个体已被划分为多个年龄、优势地位、社会与繁殖类别（O’Connell-Rodwell等，2011；O’Connell等，2024a）。该种群的年龄结构基于多项形态特征确定，详情可参见原始文献（O’Connell-Rodwell等，2011；O’Connell等，2022）。优势地位类别基于多野外季期间全事件采样中观察到的对抗性二元互动（即驱离行为）频率，通过种群水平的有序优势等级体系确定（O’Connell-Rodwell等，2024a）。社会类别则通过社会网络分析近似得到（例如特征向量中心性（eigenvector centrality）——一种衡量个体影响力的指标..., ） # 用于评估雄性非洲稀树草原象移动的物理与社会驱动因素相互作用的数据包 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qm3](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4qrfj6qm3) ## 数据与文件结构说明 **BEHECO-2023-0350.R2的README文本文件**（[https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arae091](https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arae091)） 本数据包与论文BEHECO-2023-0350.R2相关，论文标题为《雄性非洲稀树草原象移动的物理与社会驱动因素的相互作用》。 CodeDemo.nb（又称“工作”笔记本）中的代码采用Wolfram语言编写，其使用了另一个独立代码包Movement.wl中的函数，该包亦随数据包一同提供。CodeDemo笔记本演示了如何将这些函数应用于大象移动与物理环境数据。假定Movement.wl与各类输入文件（详见下文）均与CodeDemo.nb处于同一目录下。 大象移动数据未予提供...