Elephants Found to be Increasingly Isolated, Leading to Fractured Social Networks

A 12-year UC San Diego study of more than 440 wild female Asian elephants at Sri Lanka’s Udawalawe National Park, published on the cover of the November 12 issue of Science, documented a sharp transition from large, densely connected social communities to smaller, more isolated groupings as the population declined. Lead author Anastasia Madsen, working in the lab of associate professor Shermin de Silva, attributed the shift to a gradual accumulation of losses from deaths, permanent emigrations and too few new individuals entering the population. The researchers describe a social “tipping point”: once losses crossed a critical threshold, the remaining elephants not only had fewer relationships but also changed how they interacted with one another. The finding matters because Asian elephants rely on cooperative social networks to access food and care for their young, so fractured communities may undermine the species’ long-term viability. Watch for follow-up work on whether the isolated groupings persist or recover, and on how the tipping-point threshold identified here applies to other declining elephant populations.