Grey wolf (Canis lupus) populations are beginning to increase globally after centuries of decline. While protective legislations and policy implementations have been driving this increase, evidence suggests that these work because of a general rise in public acceptance of wolves. As people have become more knowledgeable of the important ecological roles played by wolves, protection has gained increasing community support, with human-wolf coexistence now being achieved in some areas. However, this is not universal, and some subspecies remain endangered. This is the case for the little-known Arabian wolf (Canis lupus arabs), which inhabits arid regions of the southern Levant and Arabian Peninsula: a geopolitically diverse region crossing multiple jurisdictions with disparate cultures, legislations, and attitudes towards wildlife and conservation. Here we review global efforts within the wolf conservation sphere to explore potential opportunities and challenges in the Middle East, acknowledging and accounting for the unique geopolitical complexity of this region. We bring together what is known about this wolf's taxonomic status, distribution, ecology, and conservation across eleven countries in which it resides, collating decades of legislation, governmental, and non-governmental conservation efforts, and summarising literature pertinent to the Arabian wolf. Cross-border collaborations remain challenging in the Middle East, but we identify practical and culturally-based solutions that may improve coexistence and conservation goals, building upon areas where coexistence already occurs. We write this review in the hope that it will highlight the synergies, opportunities, and obstacles that require more serious deliberation and collaboration to conserve one of the region's remaining apex predators.

Anthropogenic habitat modification can indirectly effect reproduction and survival in social species by changing the group structure and social interactions. We assessed the impact of habitat modification on the fitness and life history traits of a cooperative breeder, the Arabian babbler (Argya squamiceps). We collected spatial, reproductive and social data on 572 individuals belonging to 21 social groups over 6 years and combined it with remote sensing to characterize group territories in an arid landscape. In modified resource-rich habitats, groups bred more and had greater productivity, but individuals lived shorter lives than in natural habitats. Habitat modification favoured a faster pace-of-life with lower dispersal and dominance acquisition ages, which might be driven by higher mortality providing opportunities for the dominant breeding positions. Thus, habitat modification might indirectly impact fitness through changes in social structures. This study shows that trade-offs in novel anthropogenic opportunities might offset survival costs by increased productivity.

Cognition is a powerful adaptation, enabling animals to utilise resources that are unavailable without manipulation. Tool use and food processing are examples of using cognition to overcome the protective mechanisms of food resources. Here, we describe and examine the flexibility of proto-tool use (defined as the alteration of an object through object-substrate manipulation) for food processing in a cooperatively breeding bird, the Arabian babbler (Argya squamiceps). Field observations demonstrate that the birds transport different caterpillar species to different substrate types depending on the processing method needed to prepare the caterpillar for eating. Species with toxic setae (e.g. Casama innotata) are transported to be rubbed on rough substrates (e.g. sand) before consumption, while other species (e.g. Hyles livornica) are transported to be pounded against hard substrates until their inner organs are removed and only their external body part is consumed. These results are among the few to describe flexible proto-tool use for food processing in wild animals. They thereby contribute to the taxonomic mapping of proto-tool use and food processing in non-human species, which is a fundamental step to advance comparative studies on the evolution of these behaviours and their underlying cognitive mechanisms.

When studying bird intra-and inter-specific interactions it is crucial to accurately track which individual emits which vocalization. However, locating sounds of free moving birds (and other animals) in nature can be challenging, especially in situations when many individuals call in spatial and temporal vicinity. In this paper, we will introduce the use of a hand-held acoustic camera which allows solving this problem. The system comprises of 64 microphones each sampling a wide angle at a rate of 200kHz. The system can localize up to dozens of nearby callers and it displays them on a visual image. We applied the system to localize and record vocalizations of Arabian babblers (Argya squamiceps) during snake-mobbing behavior.As the recorded babblers are ringed and therefore identifiable, we could use the calling order to analyse the vocalizing mob and to reconstruct a vocal social network depicting which individuals call after which individuals. Vocal networks in wild animals have so-far received limited research attention due to technological constraints. Acoustic analysis revealed that Arabian babblers call in a periodic pattern and with age specific pause lengths between different individuals. Mobbing events with young babblers display a lower vocal network density compared to only adult groups. Our approach demonstrates how this novel technology can be applied to reveal new insight about vocal events in group living wild animals. The approach can be elaborated to study intra-and inter-specific animal vocalizations.

Introduced predators are thought to be responsible for the decline and extinction of their native prey. The prey naivety hypothesis provides a mechanism for these declines, suggesting that native prey are vulnerable to introduced predators as their coevolutionary history is insufficiently long for antipredator behaviours to fully develop. The prey naivety hypothesis thus predicts that prey will be less responsive to introduced predators than to native predators. Australia's endemic small mammals are thought to be vulnerable to predation by red foxes because they are less responsive to – or naive of – a predator with whom they have only co-occurred since the 19th century. To test whether nativeness determines antipredator behaviours we compared small mammal behavioural responses to fox scent outside (Australia) and inside the foxes' native range (North America and Israel). We conducted giving-up density experiments in the deserts of these three regions and evaluated small mammal antipredator responses to fox scent. To place these results in a broader context, we then integrated our results into a global meta-analysis of studies assessing prey responsiveness to fox scent. All small mammals similarly increased their vigilance in response to fox scent, regardless of their coevolutionary history with foxes. Australian small mammals responded with greater wariness to fox scent, by decreasing time at food patches in response to fox scent more than Israeli and American small mammals did. However, we found no evidence that this behaviour influenced foraging as nut consumption was unaffected. Our meta-analysis revealed that globally, small mammals respond with similar wariness to fox scent regardless of whether foxes are their native predator. We found no evidence that Australian small mammals respond in a maladaptive manner, compared to the foxes' native prey. Our results suggest that animals can develop antipredator behaviours to introduced predators to the same magnitude as native prey.

Here, we present a protocol for collecting data on multiple interaction types in small, stable groups of Arabian babblers (Argya squamiceps). We describe the procedure of habituation, the recording of social interactions, and how to classify the interaction types. Additionally, we provide code for testing, comparing, and visualizing data. The high-resolution data collection is time demanding and requires several data tests before forming the final protocol. The collected data can then be used for multiplex social network analysis.

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) is recovering globally due to increasing human acceptance, which can drive trophic cascades. An endangered subspecies, the Arabian wolf (Canis lupus arabs), inhabits arid regions of the southern Levant and Arabian Peninsula where it remains widely persecuted, and little is known about its ecology. Most of the Arabian wolf’s range is dominated by pastoralism, where tolerance of wolves is low. We assessed how acceptance of Arabian wolves, relative to human land-use and density, has cascading effects on other canids by comparing spatial and temporal interactions, and relative abundance of canids across a hyper-arid desert crossing the Israel-Jordan border. Canids responded by adjusting their spatial and temporal activity patterns in relation to human activity. Wolves were recorded significantly less in pastoralist landscapes, leading to cascading effects. We found that jackals (Canis aureus) and foxes (Vulpes spp.) are both suppressed by larger canids. Wolves and jackals both suppressed foxes, but wolves also facilitated foxes by reducing pressure from jackals. Representing the first documentation of the role of an apex predator in the Middle East, our findings highlight the strong ecological effects that Arabian wolves have on desert ecosystems. Conservation efforts should focus on increasing tolerance and working towards coexistence in pastoralist landscapes.

The social environment of individuals affects various evolutionary and ecological processes. Their social environment is affected by individual and environmental traits. We assessed the effects of these traits on nodes and dyads in six layers of networks of Arabian babblers, representing different interaction types. Additionally, we tested how traits affect social niches in the multilayer networks using the t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (tSNE) dimensionality reduction algorithm. The effect of group size and season was similar across network layers, but individual traits had different effects on different layers. Additionally, we documented assortativity with respect to individual traits in the dominance display and allopreening networks. The joint analysis of all six layers revealed that most traits did not affect individuals' social niches. However, older individuals occupied fewer social niches than younger ones. Our results suggest that multilayer social networks are an important tool for understanding the complex social systems of cooperative breeders and intragroup interactions.

Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodiversity should be guided by compassion for all sentient beings. Critics argue that there are 3 core reasons harming animals is acceptable in conservation programs: the primary purpose of conservation is biodiversity protection; conservation is already compassionate to animals; and conservation should prioritize compassion to humans. We used argument analysis to clarify the values and logics underlying the debate around compassionate conservation. We found that objections to compassionate conservation are expressions of human exceptionalism, the view that humans are of a categorically separate and higher moral status than all other species. In contrast, compassionate conservationists believe that conservation should expand its moral community by recognizing all sentient beings as persons. Personhood, in an ethical sense, implies the individual is owed respect and should not be treated merely as a means to other ends. On scientific and ethical grounds, there are good reasons to extend personhood to sentient animals, particularly in conservation. The moral exclusion or subordination of members of other species legitimates the ongoing manipulation and exploitation of the living worlds, the very reason conservation was needed in the first place. Embracing compassion can help dismantle human exceptionalism, recognize nonhuman personhood, and navigate a more expansive moral space.

In population dynamics, inverse density dependence can be manifested by individual fitness traits (component Allee effects), and population-level traits (demographic Allee effects). Cooperatively breeding species are an excellent model for investigating the relative importance of Allee effects, because there is a disproportionately larger benefit to an individual of being part of a large group. As a consequence, larger groups have greater performance than small groups, known as the group Allee effect. Although small populations of cooperative breeders may be prone to all levels of Allee effects, empirical evidence for the existence of a demographic Allee effects is scarce. To determine the extent to which Allee effects are present in a cooperatively breeding species, we used a comprehensive 35-year life history database for cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers (Turdoides squamiceps). Firstly, we confirmed the existence of a component Allee effect by showing that breeding individuals in large groups receive greater benefits than those in small groups; second, we confirmed the existence of group Allee effect by showing that larger groups survive longer. And thirdly, we identified a demographic Allee effect by showing that per capita population growth rate is positively affected by population density. Finally, we found that emigration and immigration rates, although dependent on group size, do not buffer against component and group-level Allee effects becoming a demographic Allee effect. Our finding of the existence of all three levels of Allee effects in a cooperative breeder may have important implications for future research and conservation decisions.