Social relationships are shaped by ecological conditions, giving rise to diverse societies even among related species. Among elephants, females exhibit close, often familial bonds with some degree of philopatry and fission–fusion dynamics. Forest elephant sociality is the least studied among elephant species, and their ecology differs from that of savannah and Asian elephants. We use over 15 years of data from an individually identified population using the Dzanga Bai forest clearing in Central African Republic to characterize social patterns of adult female elephants in two contexts, when entering the forest clearing and within the clearing. Social properties were nonrandom and highly stable over the study period in both contexts. Composition of aggregations within the clearing indicated considerable mixing among females, while association in groups entering the bai together were limited in composition, likely representing core social units. The co-entry data set exhibited distinct communities that were not apparent in the co-occurrence data set. In contrast to savannah elephants, network centrality and age were negatively correlated, suggesting a muted or absent matriarch social hub role in forest elephants at a broader level than family units. Temporal and community analyses indicated that bai co-entry and co-occurrence contexts may represent distinct processes, with the former social and the latter driven by shared resource use. Our results point to social patterns potentially driven by the need for families to fission into small units because of resource competition and highlight the importance of aggregation context in interpreting association indices.

中文翻译：

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中非白蚁的进入和聚集揭示了难以捉摸的森林大象 Loxodonta cyclotis 的社会模式

社会关系受生态条件的影响，甚至在相关物种之间也产生了多样化的社会。在大象中，雌性表现出密切的，通常是家庭联系，具有一定程度的亲情和裂变融合动力学。森林象的社会性是大象物种中研究最少的，它们的生态与热带草原和亚洲象的生态不同。我们使用来自中非共和国 Dzanga Bai 森林空地的个体识别人口超过 15 年的数据来表征成年雌性大象在进入森林空地和空地内的两种情况下的社会模式。在这两种情况下，研究期间的社会属性都是非随机的且高度稳定。空地内聚集体的组成表明雌性之间有相当多的混合，而一起进入白族的团体的联系在组成上是有限的，很可能代表了核心社会单位。共存数据集展示了在共现数据集中不明显的不同社区。与热带草原大象相反，网络中心性和年龄呈负相关，这表明在比家庭单位更广泛的层面上，森林大象中的母系社会中心角色是沉默的或不存在的。时间和社区分析表明，白族共进入和共现背景可能代表不同的过程，前者是社会性的，后者是由共享资源使用驱动的。我们的结果指出了可能由家庭因资源竞争而分裂成小单位的需要所驱动的社会模式，并强调了聚合背景在解释关联指数中的重要性。