Simulated poaching affects global connectivity and efficiency in social networks of African savanna elephants—An exemplar of how human disturbance impacts group-living species
Fig 1
The distribution of association indices in (A) the empirically based versus (B) virtual populations, as a function of age category and kinship of the associating individuals. Age categories are abbreviated using the following symbols: Y—young adult; P—prime adult; M—mature adult; G–the matriarch. During each random deletion, the same proportion of individuals as in targeted deletions was removed randomly. After every deletion proportion, we recalculated the following network level indices: clustering coefficient, as well as weighted diameter, global efficiency and modularity (Table 1). As in the empirically based portion of our study, we used the Hedge’s g test to quantify the difference in the effect size between the means of all network indices across 1) the deletion proportion spectrum, 2) deletion type and 3) deletion metric [96].