Frogs find refuge in elephant tracks

Study says pachyderm puddles are amphibian condos

Date:  June 4, 2019

Source:  Wildlife Conservation Society

Frogs need elephants. That's what a new WCS-led study says that looked at the role of water-filled elephant tracks in providing predator-free breeding grounds and pathways connecting frog populations.

Publishing in the journal Mammalia, the researchers found that rain-filled tracks of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) were filled with frog egg masses and tadpoles. The tracks can persist for a year or more and provide temporary habitat during the dry season where alternate sites are unavailable. Trackways could also function as "stepping stones" that connect frog populations.

This study was made available online in September 2018 ahead of final publication in print in May 2019.

The researchers made their observations in Myanmar's Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary.

Elephants are widely recognized as "ecosystem engineers," where they extensively modify vegetation through browsing, trampling, and seed dispersal, and convert large amounts of plant biomass into dung that is an important nutrient input for terrestrial and aquatic systems. At smaller scales, local plant species richness is enhanced when elephants open gaps in the forest canopy, browsing damage to trees creates refuges for small vertebrates (lizards and small mammals), and dung piles provide food for a diversity of beetles.

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Ancient tracks are elephant herd

By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC Nature

A seven-million-year-old trail of fossilised footprints in the Arabian desert was left by a herd of ancient elephants, according to scientists.

Researchers say the "trackways" reveal that animals that left them had a rich and complex social structure.

Just like modern elephant society, this consisted of family herds and of solitary male animals.

The study is published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Lead researcher Dr Faysal Bibi, a palaeontologist based at the University of Poitiers in France and the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Germany, described the footprints as "fossilised behaviour".

Dr Bibi explained to BBC Nature that there were two different sets of tracks across the site.

"We have tracks from a herd, from which we calculated the size profile [of each animal]," he said.

"And, just by luck, we also have the trackway of a solitary individual travelling almost perpendicular to the herd."

Dr Bibi described the site as "absolutely unique".

"[It's] a really rare opportunity in the fossil record that lets you see animal behaviour in a way you couldn't do with bones or teeth," he said.

Although the area near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates has been known to locals for generations, it was first studied by scientists in 2001.

Dr Bibi explained that a colleague of his, Mark Beech, was taking part in an archaeological excavation nearby.

"A local man named Mubarak Bin Rashid al-Mansouri - who knows the desert there like the back of his hand - led [Mark] to the site," he explained.

Read on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17102135