User:Cashelcain1992/sandbox

IN AFRICAN ELEPHANT WIKI PAGE AS A SUBSECTION Sexual selection is a type of natural selection, defined as an organism's ability to attract and reproduce with another successfully. For some species this can be a song, beautifully colored plumage, males fighting over a female or presenting gifts. Doing this ensures that the offspring continues to thrive, only reproducing with those that have qualities the species deem necessary for survival. Sexual Selection differs in African elephants,Loxodonta africana, depending on if they are in the wild or in captivity. Captive elephants are bred in sanctuaries or habitats which means that understanding how elephants decide who to mate with is increasingly important.

Female African elephants are able to start reproducing between ages 10-12 years old, and are in estrus for about 2-7 days. They do not have a specific time that they mate, however they are less likely to reproduce in times of drought than when water is plentiful. The gestation period of an elephant is 22 months and fertile females usually give birth every 3-6 years, so if they live to around 50 years of age, they can have around 7 offspring.

Wild males begin breeding in their 30s when they are at a size and weight that is competitive with other adult males. At any given time, less than a third of the population of elephants will be in estrus at the same time, so it makes more evolutionary sense for a male to search for as many females as possible rather than staying with a group. After growing up, musth, a physical and behavioral condition that is characterized by elevated testosterone, aggression and more sexual activity, begins to occur.

Males have certain traits that allow for them to compete successfully with other males for an estrous female. Males do not have to worry about mate choice, except when trying to avoid inbreeding, while females need to look for the best candidate. If she chooses the wrong mate, it would be more costly to her than the male. Therefore the female must be able to see through dishonest male’s signs and look for the honest male conditions. During the middle of estrus, female elephants look for males in musth to guard them, which leads to mating, however in the early and late stages of estrus, they are not guarded which can lead to mating by nonmusth younger males. During oestrus, females will yell, in a loud, low way to attract males from far away, and try to get males to compete with each other, which leads to the females mating with older, healthier males. This shows that females choose to a point who they mate with, since they are the ones who try to get males to guard them. Musth also serves a purpose of calling attention to the females that they are of good quality, and it cannot be faked like certain calls or noises can (elephantconversation.org). African elephants, Loxodonta africana, use fighting, their size as well as a few other things to compete sexually. African elephant females live in groups, while males tend to live a lonely and secluded life. Males usually only stay with a female and her herd for a few weeks before moving on in search for another mate, which makes sense because of the long gestation period of an elephant. Because of this, certain characteristics are necessary for males to successfully reproduce with the female elephants they encounter who are fertile. If they can smell the hormones of a female ready for breeding, then their size and their aggression during musth allows those males to compete for that female. Larger males have a higher occurrence of reproducing success then smaller ones do, and since they reach maturation of size around the same time as sexual maturity, reproducing success hits it’s highest point around their mid-adult years and begins to decline. However, this can depend on the ranking of the male within their group, as higher-ranking males maintain a higher rate of reproduction (male guarding…).

In the Wild
African elephants show sexual dimorphism in weight and shoulder height by age 20, however both sexes continue to grow throughout their existence. By age 25, males are double the weight of females. Males over the age of 25 compete strongly for females in estrous, and are more successful the larger they are. This sexual dimorphism continues due to rapid early growth of males as well as the success of bigger males to reproduce bigger offspring Females are a scarce and mobile resource for the males so there is an intense intrasexual selection to gain access to estrous females. Most observed matings are by males over 35 years of age and while the male is in musth. Twenty-two long observations showed that age and musth are extremely important for paternity success. Paternity success increased with age, until the oldest class, after which is decreases. In the periods the male is not in musth, males have more constantly low levels of paternity success, however they still produce offspring during these times. “However, older males had markedly elevated paternity success compared with younger males, suggesting the possibility of sexual selection for longevity in this species” (Hollister-Smith, et al. 287).

In Captivity
Captive elephants are socially about the same as they are in the wild. Females are kept with other females, in groups, while males tend to be separated from their mothers at a rather young age, and are kept separately, especially as adults. In North America, according to Schulte, in the 90s, there were a few facillites that allowed male interaction, while in the other facilities, they could only smell each other. Males and females could interact, whether that is for the living situation, for purposes of breeding, or sometimes never together. When it comes to breeding, females are more often moved to the male, rather than moving the male. Males still can be in musth, however the benefits are gone, because they cannot show dominance or try to change the hierarchy since they are usually kept apart, and they cannot compete sexually for a female to select them. More females are kept in captivity, because they are easier and less expensive to house since they can be kept together.