Ecophysiology to understand elephants' crop raiding behavior.

Conservation science has emerged to stem the current loss of biodiversity. To be efficient in this goal it needs integrative disciplines like ecophysiology, a biological field that studies the adaptation of an organism's physiology to environmental conditions. Surprisingly few conservationists utilize physiological methodology, yet these tools have great potential to enhance preservation of species; for example, exploring biological causes of human-animal conflict. Here we discuss how ecophysiological explorations could help understand elephant crop raiding behaviour and identify related gaps in knowledge. We also describe how related investigations already have produced successful conservation outcomes in species like amphibians, terrestrial carnivores and small desert mammals. For elephants, ecophysiology based studies have been conducted, although few in the context of human-elephant conflict (HEC).