The effects of time of day, gender, and age on time budgets in African Elephants in Kruger National Park

The African elephant, Loxodonta africana, is a species of great importance in
Kruger National Park because of the extensive impact it has on ecological processes. In
this study, we focused on the effects of time of day, gender and age on time budgets in
elephants. We sought to determine whether there were any activities that were performed
more frequently at different times of the day or by elephants of a certain age or gender.
Using focal observation, we determined the proportion of total time spent performing
various activities. We found that the time budgets did not vary statistically with gender
or age, but that there were significant differences in time spent standing still between the
morning and afternoon (p=0.0143). More time was spent eating in the afternoon than the
morning (p=0.002183), but overall time spent eating was less than previous studies have
found. Despite the fact that elephant populations in Kruger are growing, the destruction
of trees was not observed in any of our focal studies, indicating elephants in our study did
not appear to impact the ecosystem as much as reported in previous literature.

非洲象（Loxodonta africana）是克鲁格国家公园中具有重要生态价值的物种，因其对生态过程存在广泛影响。本研究围绕日间时段、性别与年龄对大象活动时间分配的影响展开，旨在探明是否存在某些活动在特定日间时段、特定年龄或性别的大象中发生频率更高。本研究采用焦点取样（focal observation）法，统计了各类活动占总时长的比例。研究结果表明，大象的活动时间分配在性别与年龄维度上未出现统计学显著差异，但静立时长在上午与下午之间存在显著差异（p=0.0143）；下午时段的进食时长显著高于上午（p=0.002183），但整体进食时长低于既往研究的报道结果。尽管克鲁格国家公园的大象种群数量持续增长，但本研究的所有焦点观察样本均未发现树木被破坏的情况，说明本研究中的大象对生态系统的影响并未如既往文献所报道的那般显著。