Poachers target older elephants for ivory because their tusks are larger. Elephants live in groups led by older females, and their loss may drastically affect the social structures of these communities.

Yet elephant societies managed to survive the loss of their matriarchs, a new study has found.

“We were expecting some sort of social collapse, especially knowing how important matriarchs are to a society,” said Shifra Goldenberg, a wildlife ecologist doctoral candidate at Colorado State University and an author of the new report, which was published in Current Biology.

Instead, the researchers found that after the loss of a matriarch, female offspring often stepped in and leveraged their mother’s contacts to rebuild social networks. (The study did not track adult males.)

Typically, elephants live in core, bond and clan groups. Core groups comprise close relatives, and bond and clan groups include more distant ones.