Rajnish P G Vandercone

Rajnish P G Vandercone
University of Peradeniya | UOP

Doctor of Philosophy

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28
Publications
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214
Citations

Publications

Publications (28)
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Minneriya National Park (NP) is well-known for its significant Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population, offering a valuable opportunity to study elephant behavior, social dynamics, and demographic characteristics. This study employed five camera traps over 158 days (323 camera days; number of cameras × active days) during February-July 2024. Ca...
Article
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Infanticide, the killing of conspecific infants, has been observed in many species, including rodents, carnivores, and notably, primates. Although several adaptive and non‐adaptive hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, most cases to date appear consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis, particularly in primates. According...
Article
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In-situ and ex-situ Asian elephant populations are threatened with extinction, and male elephants pose unique challenges to long-term sustainability. The heightened sexual state of “musth” is accompanied by a suite of physical, behavioral and physiological changes. Furthermore, musth is unique to male elephants and requires special consideration wh...
Article
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Asian elephants are endangered, and the long-term viability of the species depends on integrative approaches to address the sustainability of in-situ and ex-situ populations. Growing evidence shows that male elephants exhibit extensive and flexible social behavior that rivals the complexity of that of females. Male elephant sociality is expected to...
Article
Complementary studies of wild and zoo-housed animals offer insight into behavioral variation across a range of conditions including the context under which various behaviors evolved in natural settings. This information can be used to improve the sustainability of in-situ and ex-situ populations and enhance the well-being of individuals. Managed ex...
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Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) is becoming increasingly prevalent as human activity expands, and monitoring the impact of habitat quality on wildlife mortality related to HWC is critical for the well-being of wildlife and people. Using ten years of necropsies from free-ranging Asian elephants in the Northwestern Wildlife Region (NWR) of Sri Lanka, w...
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Basic ecological information is of critical importance for the development of conservation strategies for endangered amphibian species. The Gannoruwa Shrub Frog (Pseudophilautus zorro) is an endangered endemic and a geographically restricted frog found in mid elevations of the central highlands of Sri Lanka whose ecology is little known. We assesse...
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Full-text available
Context Human–elephant conflict (HEC) is a major threat to Asian elephants as humans and elephants are forced to share common resources. In Sri Lanka, human-dominated landscapes adjacent to protected areas promote high rates of HEC, especially in the form of crop-foraging by elephants. Crop-foraging can be dangerous to both elephants and humans inv...
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Sri Lanka is a biodiversity hotspot that is under high anthropogenic pressure. The long-term survival of its biodiversity, including primates, is under threat. Due to an increased rate of deforestation outside protected areas after the civil war in the northern dry zone, protected areas are key for the long-term persistence of primates. A rapid ass...
Article
Many wildlife species suffer from human-wildlife conflict, especially crop-raiding. Long-term analyses of mortality patterns are needed to assess the efficacy of management strategies that address this issue. We report mortality patterns from necropsies of 498 Asian elephants from 2009-2018 in an area of northwestern Sri Lanka. Deaths were lowest i...
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Hybridization is increasingly recognized as an important mechanism of evolutionary change in the order Primates. Here, we present the first observational data supporting natural hybridization between the critically endangered purple-faced langur (Semnopithecus vetulus philbricki) and the threatened tufted gray langur (Semnopithecus priam thersites)...
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Understanding the conditions under which interacting species can persist is a major goal in ecology. Dietary partitioning is one of the major strategies that enables ecologically similar species to coexist in communities. In this study, we examined the dietary patterns of a selected group of amphibians in an amphibian community in northern Sri Lank...
Article
Understanding the mechanisms by which organisms respond to environmental change is critical to conservation biology. Recent research indicates that the gut microbiome may mediate mammalian responses to the environment and can be used as a biomarker to understand host ecological strategies. Here, we explore the relationship between the gut microbiom...
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Nannophrys marmorata is a critically endangered species of frog known only from a few locations in the Knuckles Conservation Forest (KCF) in the Knuckles mountain range of Sri Lanka. Here, we report new localities outside its known range in the KCF and examine the distribution of N. marmorata providing the most extensive distribution map for this s...
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Our understanding of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of seed dispersal by Asian elephants is at its infancy. We explored some of these aspects at Kaudulla National Park, Sri Lanka, focusing on the germination potential of dispersed seeds, and the influence of gut passage on germination and latency in the seeds of Bauhinia racemosa. Seeds o...
Article
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Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria in Fecal Matter of Wild Elephants (Elephas maximus) J.A.A.W.L. Jayasekara, K.G.D.De.A. Abeysinghe, D.M.J.C. Dissanayake, R.P.G. Vandercone, T.C. Bamunuarachchige Abstract Excessive usage of antibiotics in medicinal and non-medicinal fields such as agriculture, animal husbandry and aquaculture is the fun...
Conference Paper
Elephants are ecosystem engineers that modify their environment through actions such as herbivory and seed dispersal. Their broad dietary breadth, large gape size, and extensive home ranges accentuate their role as the ideal seed dispersal agents. Thus, an increase or decline in elephant populations may have consequential impacts on sustaining fore...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Crop raiding by primates is a prevalent form of human-monkey conflict along the forest-farmland ecotone in many primate habitat countries including Sri Lanka. The financial losses suffered by farmers from crop raiding monkeys can be relatively high and is compounded by the lack of compensation for losses. Such a situation can make farming communiti...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Mutualistic interactions such as frugivory and animal seed dispersal have profound implications for the persistence of tropical biodiversity. Recently, a number of studies have applied network analyses to provided novel insights into plant-frugivore interactions in tropical rain forests. In comparison little is know on the interdependence between...
Article
The identification of random walk models to characterize the movement patterns of social groups of primates, and the behavioral processes that give rise to such movement patterns, remain open questions in movement ecology. Movement patterns characterized by a power-law tail with exponent between 1 and 3 (Lévy flight) occur when animals forage on sc...
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Understanding how ecological differences between sympatric species lead to coexistence is a fundamental question in primatology. Evidence for intraspecific dietary variation in colobines suggests that findings from a single study site may not be generalizable to other sites. Previous comparative studies of Semnopithecus entellus and Trachypithecus...
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The baobab (Adansonia digitata) is not native to Sri Lanka, but was introduced centuries ago, perhaps by Arab traders. Today about 40 trees survive in Sri Lanka, of which 34 have been identified and measured in the island of Mannar. The most abundant size class was between 5 and 9.9 m (girth at breast height), which accounted for more than 50% of t...
Article
Full-text available
The Minneriya National Park was established mainly to enhance the long-term survival of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) in a predominantly agricultural area in Sri Lanka. The ancient reservoir, after which the Park is named, is seasonally horure to large numbers ofelephants because ofthe availability ofwater and the extensive areas ofgrassland...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding how niche differences evolve in ecologically similar species and how these differences are maintained ecologically is a fundamental question in ecology. Interspecific competition has been shown to influence the behavior and ecology of organisms in a wide range of ecological communities. However, the broader role of interspecific compe...

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