Read it a few times to understand the core message because the thesis and title are slightly self-evident i.e. more isolation causes less socializing. But the crux seems to be:

> "We see individual elephants leaving and possibly dying at accelerating rates, but new individuals are not coming into the population,” said Madsen. “With fewer individuals in the population, those who are left will naturally have fewer relationships. However, the remaining elephants are also changing their relationships with each other."

In my opinion "dying at accelerating rates" is the/a key takeaway. Notably climate change doesn't seem to be explicitly mentioned and hate to see poaching be a direct cause:

> Many elephant populations are already impacted through deaths resulting from poaching and conflicts with humans. Other contributing factors may be disruptions in habitat connectivity and less food available...

Other comments mention other intelligent and social species and this reminds me of Puget Sound Southern resident killer whales [0] and their decrease in food availability and offspring viability.

[0]: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-s...

> "Notably climate change doesn't seem to be explicitly mentioned"

If it'd be my study, I'd also avoid mentioning climate-change explicitly.

With the (US-governments') move from mere verbal denial of climate change to institutional and policy-level skepticism of everything and everyone just using the term, it could cause the whole paper to be dismissed in discussions of some circles...