TY - JOUR T1 - Effects of male age and female presence on male associations in a large, polygynous mammal in southern India JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/485144 SP - 485144 AU - P. Keerthipriya AU - S. Nandini AU - T.N.C. Vidya Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/04/485144.abstract N2 - We present here, the first detailed study of adult male associations in an Asian elephant population, using six years of data collected on identified males. As expected in a large, polygynous species, adult males spent greater proportions of their time solitarily or in mixed-sex groups than in all-male groups. However, the adult male associations seen were complex, with different patterns of male associations based on their age and on the presence or absence of females. Old and young males spent more time associating with their age-peers and less time associating across age classes than expected at random in the absence of females. Young males did not spend a greater proportion of their time with old males than with young males. Young males did not initiate associations with old males to a greater extent than old males approaching young males. Moreover, male age was not correlated with centrality measures in association networks and was negatively correlated with the number of unique associates per time in the absence of females. All of these suggest that male associations in female absence are primarily a means for males to test strengths against age-peers rather than an opportunity for social learning from old males. Male associations in female presence were rarer than in female absence, and old, reproductively competitive, males avoided each other in female presence, resulting in different male association network properties. Although male associations were generally weak and not stable across years, there were some significant associations. Overall, there was a smaller proportion of time spent in all-male groups, smaller group sizes, and a limited role of older males in the association network in the Kabini Asian elephant population compared to the phylogenetically closely related African savannah elephant. These differences may be related to differences in resource distributions in the two habitats. ER -