Environment-enrichment activities
Although elephants have a broad diet and consume a large quantity of food, elephants often discard large amounts of undigested food in their dung, which means the elephant’s dung is rich in nutrition and good for the plants and forest. Therefore, deposition and distribution of these undigested materials are considered to be a great example of habitat enrichment by elephants.
Dropping is not the only way that elephants enrich their habitat. By trampling down the vegetation with their large drum-shaped feet while feeding, elephants create a new way to fertilize the land and help to develop a protective cover of litter and duff shading the soil. This feeding behavior of elephant is very valuable to the tropical forest soils in East Africa where it is warm and moist.
Why African Elephants?
Why African elephants matter to us. In other words, why should we care about elephants at all? African elephants are amazing and the largest land animal on earth. They play a crucial role in the African ecosystem, its contribution to the local economy.
Seed dispersal/Forest gardeners
Daniel Janzen and Joseph Connell suggested that few seeds can germinate or survive under the parent tress because they would have higher chance to suffer from the seed or seedling predators and pathogens (disease-producing agent) that are found more commonly around the parent trees. It is known as Janzen-Connell Hypothesis. Long distance dispersal is good for the forest because it promotes colonization in new areas and ecological succession and enhances connectivity in fragmented landscapes (Fragoso et al. 2003). Therefore, seed dispersal mechanisms and long distance dispersal are crucial to plant life and diversity. Studies show they shape the structure, composition, and function of ecosystem (Campos-Arceiz & Blake 2011). In Africa, majority of tree species rely on elephants to transport the seeds.
Stimulating Seed Germination
A seed contains a thick outer layer to protect the seed until the right conditions exist to seeding. Germination is the process of a plant growing from a seed. Studies show that seeds going through the digestive tract of an elephant reduce the time to germination because the gastric acids wear off the outer layer of the seed in which contains an embryonic plant in a resting condition, thus stimulating germination. From ingestion, the seed is discarded along with other waste into a moist and fertilized dung pile, elephants provide a great growing environment for seedling: humidity and nutrition along with protection from other seed predators (Campos-Arceiz and Blake’s 2011).
The consequences of Losing elephants
Losing the elephant population will result in a limited number of tree species being poorly dispersed or not dispersed at all. It will also cause many species to be dispersed in low quantities and very short distances, which will result in low quality genes and survival probability. It will also affect the small animals that are dependent on these species. Overall, it simplifies the forest community level interaction network, increases the vulnerability of ecosystem functions, and changes the demography and distribution of a number of tree species (Campos-Arceiz & Blake, 2011). The decline of the African elephant population for the past decade has begun to alter the African ecosystem and affecting the local economy.
Adapted from Babweteera et al. 2007.)
Adapted from Toit. J.T., Moe. S., & Skarpe. C. 2014.)
Facilitates Nutrient Cycle
Elephants not only have an enormous impact on African forest’s diversity, they also play an important role in maintaining stable savanna woodland ecosystems in African. Elephants facilitate the flow of nutrients from a slow and deep tree nutrient cycle into a fast and shallow cycle that efficiently supports a higher productivity and diversity of plants and animals. Elephants selectively consume the plants at the transition zone where the trees have fast growth rates and convert the tissues from the plants into dung, urine, meat, and bone. Then, through defecation, urination, death and decomposition, the nutrients become available for grasses, forbs and shrubs to uptake quickly. This process is called a fast and shallow cycle.