Can honeybee alarm pheromones be used to deter elephants and reduce human-elephant conflicts?

Methods

Summary

Quantify behavioral response of elephants to alarm pheromone mixes: The preliminary behavioral avoidance tests with elephants will be done with a crude, prototype formulations. Behavioral avoidance will provide an effective dose to anchor our experiment and build a dose response to the mix. We will use logarithmic dilution of the chemicals in the formulation to test the dose response of elephants. Outcome: determination of the optimal dose of plus semiochemicals to elicit avoidance behavior in elephants. Using the optimal formulation dose determined as the base formulation, we will add secondary components at (at the proportion of main component 10: 1 secondary component), one by one, and determine if it increases avoidance behavior of the test animal or not.

Challenges

Deployment of semiochemical blends in appropriate locations to provide adequate fence protection may prove challenging in terms of logistics effort. we will consider various options for conducting large scale treatments.

Pre Analysis Plan

Modified elephant behavior will be described and quantified as frequency of modified responses to stimuli. Effectiveness in achieving repellence will be measured y observation and recording, plus using camera traps. Control and treatment data will be obtained and analyses using cantingly table analyses, and logistic regression.