African elephants (Loxodonta africana) play a significant role in the modification of their habitat, foremost by decreasing woody vegetation cover and density. Little is known regarding the effects of elephant habitat disturbance (EHD) on medium-to-large mammal and bird communities. While the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH) predicts species richness and diversity will be maximised in areas of moderate EHD, high levels of EHD could result in habitat degradation and negatively impact certain wildlife communities. To examine this relationship, we compared mammal and avian community assemblages, richness, and diversity across differing severities (low, medium, high) of elephant disturbed habitats (woodland, shrubland, and mixed wood/shrubland) within Rukinga Wildlife Sanctuary (RWS) in south-eastern Kenya. From June–November 2022, we collected wildlife detection data via driving transects and surveyed EHD through observation of elephant tree damage. While EHD level did impact community assemblage, possibly through vegetation modification and/or increased habitat heterogeneity, EHD had no negative impacts on species richness and diversity in the three habitat types. In contrast to our IDH prediction, richness and diversity were highest in high EHD areas within shrubland habitat and showed no difference across EHD levels for the other two habitats. Overall, this study provides evidence that elephants in RWS are not disturbing habitats to an extent that negatively impacts sanctuary viability, and at least for shrub habitat appear to enhance it. Additionally, smaller wildlife habitats may be able to mitigate lasting elephant overpopulation damages through increased connectivity to other protected areas.

We investigated species composition, relative abundance, habitat association and density of small mammals in Maze National Park, Ethiopia. Data were collected using the capture-mark-recapture technique in three representative habitat types (grassland, bushland and riverine forest) from November 2021 to August 2022. Descriptive statistics and indices for diversity and evenness were used to analyse the data. A total of 679 rodents and insectivores were collected during a span of 2 646 trap nights. Of these, 534 (76.64%) individuals were newly captured, while 145 (23.36%) were recaptures. Overall trap success was 20.18%. Five species of rodents were captured: four from the family Muridae (Mastomys natalensis, Arvicanthis niloticus, Rattus rattus and Lemniscomys macculus) and one (Xerus rutilus) from the family Sciuridae; and one insectivore species (Elephantulus rufescens) from the family Macroscelididae. Mastomys natalensis (178; 33.3%) was the most abundant, while X. rutilus (1; 0.2%) and E. rufescens (1; 0.2%) were the least abundant. Small mammal species varied significantly with habitat types (χ² = 6.101, df = 2, p ≤ 0.05), with the highest count in the bushland habitat (197; 36.89 %) and the lowest in riverine forest (152; 28.46%). The bushland and riverine forest habitats supported the highest (H′ = 1.04) and the lowest (H′ = 0.506) diversity of small mammal species, respectively. A relatively high number of small mammal species were caught during the wet season (n = 336) compared to the dry season (n = 198). Future studies using more trapping grids covering additional habitat types and genetic analyses for small mammal species confirmation are necessary for a better understanding of the Park's small mammal fauna.

Urbanisation is a major driver of habitat transformation that alters the environmental conditions and selective regimes of the habitats where it occurs. For species inhabiting urban habitats, such alterations can facilitate adaptive responses in their phenotypes, including their morphology. Quantifying potential responses could provide important information for assessing adaptation to urbanisation and may also be relevant to their conservation. Previous studies on African dwarf chameleons (Bradypodion) have shown these lizards to have remarkable adaptive capacity in response to different habitats (e.g. closed canopy habitats vs. open canopy habitats). Several of these species exploit urban habitats, but the extent to which populations are adapting to urban environments has only recently started to receive attention. In this study, we quantify differences in body size and body condition between urban and natural populations of five species of dwarf chameleons. For most comparisons, either females, males or both sexes from urban populations were longer, heavier and/or had better body condition than those from natural populations. In the remaining cases, there were no differences in these traits between populations. Our findings conform with the emerging paradigm that urbanisation positively correlates with enhanced lizard body sizes and condition, although the reasons for this may be complex. Nevertheless, our data provide an avenue for future research into investigating the potential factors (e.g. food supply, predation risk, etc.) that facilitate the trends we observed.