Elephant in the plots! and new project

-->

During the week after we got back from our Safari, we started working on a small project for Todd working in his Ant-Acacia system up on the black cotton soil in his KLEE (Kenya Longterm Exclusion Experiment) plots.  We were looking to see if the height of the tree and whether elephants were allowed in or not affected the mutualism between the ants and acacias. In short, the acacia drepanalobium trees provide nectar and homes for ants in swollen thorns in exchange for protection by the biting ants from herbivores.  What Todd has found is that when large herbivores (ex. elephants) become extinct, the mutualism breaks down.  The trees no longer produce the thorns and provide nectar, so the ants leave.  However, there are other things that eat the trees besides mammalian herbivores, so with the ants gone, the trees are susceptible to beetles and other insects and it leads to greater tree mortality.

During that week that we got back, a rogue elephant broke into KLEE.  It had apparently learned how to trip the wires and then knock down the posts where the wires weren’t live.  For an elephant, getting into KLEE is like going to a 5-star all you can eat buffet after you’ve been backpacking for 10 days.  No elephants or large herbivores have been allowed in KLEE in over 20 years, so there is plenty of tasty food.  Of course, having an elephant in KLEE is quite bad b/c it can potentially mess up the experiment going on there.  But also all the scientists working around KLEE had to be wary and several had been chased out.  We never had a close encounter, but we did have to end our day early on a couple accounts: 1 time b/c a buffalo was near us in the control plots and another b/c we saw the rogue elephant inside the plots while we were working outside the plots. 

Because of the problem of having an elephant in an experiment where they shouldn’t be, KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service, similar to our Colorado Division of Wildlife, for example) was called in.  In true Mpala style, there wasn’t much communication, so we were out in the KLEE working when KWS arrived that day.  Luckily, I had a phone with me and Eric called me to let me know KWS was coming b/c he happened to bump into them.  So he told me that it may be best to get back to the cars.  As we started heading back to the car, we heard lots of gun blasts.  KWS was shooting above the elephant in order to scare it out of the plots.  It wasn’t the gun shots that would be most concerning, however, it’s the fact that there would soon be a raging and angry elephant running our way.  But we had made it safely to the vehicle and driven back around to where the KWS vehicle was posted.  Interestingly, one of the Princeton groups had not been notified and they were in one of the KLEE exclosures while it was all going on.  At one point, we saw them sneak under the electric fence (by also tripping the wires) to escape the gunshots and rampaging elephant in the plot.  Apparently it worked as there have been no more reports of the elephant in KLEE

Paddy and the Dik diks singing about crooked jaw the rock hyrax

Elisha and Julius (holding a device to measure tall trees) in the KLEE plots

A bushbaby (galago), a tiny nocturnal primate

Elisha determining what ant inhabitant is on this acacia drepanalobium

RRB ant on a swollen thorn.