African elephant responses to synthetic honey bee alarm pheromone

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..., 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® (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 observer..., , # 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 |
| :------------------------- | :-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------...