Ivory poaching and the rapid evolution of tusklessness in African elephants
Abstract
Lose the tusks: Harvest and poaching of wildlife have increased as the human population and our technology have grown. These pressures now occur on such a scale that they can be considered selective drivers. Campbell-Staton et al . show that this phenomenon has occurred in African elephants, which are poached for their ivory, during the 20-year Mozambican civil war (see the Perspective by Darimont and Pelletier). In response to heavy poaching by armed forces, African elephant populations in Gorongosa National Park declined by 90%. As the population recovered after the war, a relatively large proportion of females were born tuskless. Further exploration revealed this trait to be sex linked and related to specific genes that generated a tuskless phenotype more likely to survive in the face of poaching. —SNV
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The imminent threats to African elephants include both poaching and human-elephant conflict.
“The imminent threats to African elephants include both poaching and human-elephant conflict (Campbell-Staton et al., 2021; Hauenstein et al., 2022; Hoare, 2015; Maisels et al., 2013; Schlossberg et al., 2020)”
From Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation (2025) · cites this paper as Campbell-Staton et al., 2021
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References 68 · Cited by 118
- Authors
- Campbell-Staton, S. C., Arnold, B. J., Gonçalves, D., Granli, P., Poole, J., Long, R. A., & Pringle, R. M.
- Affiliations
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
- Princeton University (US)
- University of Kent (GB)
- ElephantVoices, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA.
- University of Idaho (US)
- Corresponding author
- Arnold, Brian J.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2021-10-22
- Volume
- 374
- Issue
- 6566
- Pages
- 483-487
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W3205870002
- Cited by
- 118
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 7.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses
- Keywords
- Loxodonta africana, ivory poaching, natural selection, sex-linked inheritance, Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique civil war, population decline (ecology), female survival
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Crime, Elephants, Biological Evolution, Female, Male, Metalloendopeptidases, Selection, Genetic, X Chromosome, Heredity, Genes, X-Linked, Amelogenin
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