Musth is an annual, asynchronous, rut-like phenomenon observed in male elephants. We examined whether musth is a roving strategy, and whether musth provides a temporary advantage to young males through increased access to female groups. We collected long-term data on the musth status, associations, and locations of male elephants in the Kabini population in southern India. We sighted older males more frequently in musth than younger males. We found a greater turnover of musth than non-musth males in the study area, suggesting that musth is a roving strategy, enabling males to travel widely and away from their non-musth range. Contrary to our expectation, young (15–30 years old) males spent a smaller proportion of their musth time than their non-musth time associating with females, and associated with similarly sized female groups irrespective of musth status. Old (> 30 years old) males spent only a slightly higher proportion of their musth time than non-musth time with female groups, but associated with larger female groups during musth. Although old males in musth associated with young non-musth males more often in the presence, than in the absence, of females, young males in musth were never sighted with old non-musth males in the presence of females. Therefore, the payoff from musth, as a strategy to gain access to females, was age-specific; musth in old males allowed for increased association with females, while musth in young males restricted their access to females. There was no spatial avoidance between musth and non-musth adult males at scales larger than immediate associations. Our results suggest that musth seems to be primarily a roving strategy for old males to find and associate with females and not a strategy for young males to gain a temporary advantage over old males, within the broad age-classes that we examined.

中文翻译：

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麝香及其对亚洲象雄性和雌性关联的影响

Musth 是在雄性大象中观察到的一年一度的、异步的、类似车辙的现象。我们研究了 musth 是否是一种流动策略，以及 musth 是否通过增加接触女性群体的机会为年轻男性提供了暂时的优势。我们收集了关于印度南部卡比尼种群中雄性大象的胡须状况、关联和位置的长期数据。与年轻男性相比，我们更频繁地看到老年男性在胡须中。我们发现在研究区域的胡须比非胡须雄性的周转率更高，这表明胡须是一种流动策略，使雄性能够广泛地旅行并远离他们的非胡须范围。与我们的预期相反，年轻（15-30 岁）男性在与女性交往的必须时间中所占的比例比非必须时间要少，并与类似规模的女性群体相关联，无论其地位如何。老年（> 30 岁）男性在女性群体中花费的胡须时间仅略高于非胡须时间，但在胡须期间与较大的女性群体相关。尽管在有雌性的情况下，比在没有雌性的情况下，年轻的非musth雄性与年轻的非musth雄性相关联，但在有雌性的情况下，从未见过年轻的musth雄性与年长的非must雄性。因此，作为获得雌性的策略，musth 的回报是特定于年龄的。老年男性的芥末增加了与女性的联系，而年轻男性的芥末限制了他们与女性的接触。在比直接关联更大的尺度上，musth 和 nonmust 成年男性之间没有空间回避。