DOI: 10.5061/dryad.pg4f4qs0b
title: African elephant responses to synthetic honey bee alarm pheromone

description: Human-elephant conflict situations continue to be a growing conservation
 issue. Conflict situations typically arise as the result of elephants
 traversing places with infrastructure where they become disruptive to
 human activities. Developing passive options for managing elephant
 movement and reducing human-elephant conflict situations is a conservation
 priority. In this paper, we report elephant responses to a synthetic honey
 bee alarm pheromone blend, and the relationship between strength and
 frequency of deterrence responses from elephants. We show that a blend of
 isoamyl acetate, 2-heptanol and 2-nonanol, volatile chemicals known to
 stimulate honey bee vigilance, defence and mass attack, produced stronger
 repellence than isoamyl acetate alone, or blended with 2-heptanol.
 Subadult elephants, irrespective of sex, were the demographic group most
 likely to show deterrence responses to the alarm blends. In some cases,
 entire herds of elephants were repelled from alarm pheromone treatments
 placed at waterholes, suggesting that the method has potential for
 manipulation of elephant movements on a landscape. Integration of
 synthetic honey bee alarm pheromones with other elephant behavioral
 management tools is discussed.
description: Field data collection, as described in the Wildlife Biology
 paper.  Ranked deterrence responses of elephants to a
 synthetic honey bee alarm pheormone; demographic analysis (sex, age), and
 herd size. Data analyzed using logistic regression
 analysis, generalized linear models. Quoted from paper:
 we formulated isoamyl acetate, 2-heptanone, and 2-nonanol (20% V/V) with
 SPLAT<sup>®</sup> (Specialized Pheromone and Lure Application
 Technology, ISCA Technologies, Riverside, California, USA) and deployed
 the three-component formulation at waterholes in the OWNR as previously
 described by Wright et al. (2018), to observe elephant reactions.
 Waterholes (1-3 per week depending on availability) with observation hides
 were selected for the work. They were large enough to permit deployment of
 at least a control and treatment at each location, and in some locations,
 two treatments simultaneously. The blends with the chemical cues were
 replaced at each exposure. Responses were video recorded by observers
 hidden within game-viewing hides, and analyzed to detect responses to the
 treatments. Elephants moving within 1m of the treatments were considered
 to be responders. In cases where other individuals were apparently alerted
 by the responder, the herd response was considered a single response,
 rather than the sum of individuals within the herd. Responses were
 categorized on an ordinal scale. 
description: # African elephant responses to synthetic honey bee alarm pheromone
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pg4f4qs0b](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.pg4f4qs0b) ## Description of the data and file structure ### Files and variables #### File: Elephant\_response\_data\_ALL\_years\_bee.xlsx **Description:** response data for exposure of African elephants to synthetic honey bee alarm pheromones ##### Variables | Filename | the DropBox or Google drive filename; please contact authors for access to original video data | | :------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | File Location | DropBox or Google Drive  | | DateObs | Date upon which observations were made, dd/mm/yy | | Location | The waterhole used for observations | | Treatment | synthetic pheormone blend applied, see paper in Wildlife Biology for full description | | Reaction to Bee SPLAT | observed response of elephant to tretament: Reaction: 0 = no response, or curiosity but no deterrence or stress bahavior; 1 = mild concern (foot-waving; slight trunk elevation); 2 = distinct concern (ear-flap; trumpeting; Elevated trunk; tail erect; direction change); 3 = dramatic response (herd runs away or signs of multiple individuals being alerted to cues) | | Time | Time on video data when behavior commenced (reaction to treatment) in minutes and seconds. | | Reaction to Control | observed response of elephant to controlt: Reaction: 0 = no response, or curiosity but no deterrence or stress bahavior; 1 = mild concern (foot-waving; slight trunk elevation); 2 = distinct concern (ear-flap; trumpeting; Elevated trunk; tail erect; direction change); 3 = dramatic response (herd runs away or signs of multiple individuals being alerted to cues) | | Time | Time on video data when behavior commenced (reaction to control), in minutes and seconds. | | Danger signal? | Any perceived signal provided by a responding elephant -qulaitative description | | Herd size | Number of animals in herd | | RespDemCode | Responder demographic code: MA male adult; MYA male young adult / subadult; FY young adult female; FA adult female. J refers to juvenile of either sex; I refers to infant (&lt;1yr of age). | | Responder Demographics | Responder demographics: Sex; Age estimate; Matriarch vs. junior cows; "Infant: 1&gt; year Calf: 1-5 years Juvenile: 5-9 years Young Adult:  10-19 years Adult: 20+ years" | | Non-responder Demographics | As above for responder | | Behavior Descriptive notes | Observation made by indvidual analyzeing video data. Sometimes anthromporphic. Usually describing the way the animals reacted in terms of showing alarm. | | Analyzed by: | Initials of persons analyzing video data | Notes: Any empty cells or cells with -- indicate that there was no interaction between the elephant and the corresponding treatment; the elephant interacted with or reacted to the other, viz. control vs treatment. Sheets within the Excel data file: `All data` provides the full data set with all annotations; `summary methods` provides the above as given to people analyzing the video data; `Bee data stacked` is the responses of elephants isolated for analysis in JMP. ## Code/software Used JMP Pro 17.  ## Access information Other publicly accessible locations of the data: * none Data was derived from the following sources: * field experiments