Oded Keynan

Arava Dead Sea Science Center, Central Arava Branch, Vice Scientific Director

Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Eilat Campus, Faculty Member

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Oded Keynan is a lecturer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, specializing in ecology and serving as an educational entrepreneur. Oded holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolution from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and Macquarie University, Australia. Since 2017, he has been the director of the Arabian Babblers research project—a long-term research endeavor focused on studying the social dynamics of the unique cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers. Currently, Oded also serves as the Vice Scientific Director at the Dead Sea and Arava Science Center. His research expertise lies in the behavioral ecology of birds and mammals, with a particular emphasis on animal conservation. Additionally, Oded is the founder and director of the Arava Environmental Science Education Center, which hosts students and teachers from across Israel and offers advanced educational programs in STEM and agriculture.

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SONAM CHOROL

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

Nottingham Trent University

Michelle Roper

Santiago Claramunt

University of Toronto

anne-emmanuelle de bettignies

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Papers by Oded Keynan

Living fast, dying young: anthropogenic habitat modification influences the fitness and life history traits of a cooperative breeder

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), May 14, 2023

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Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences on group dynamics

All dataset from the chapter Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences o... more

Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group and demographic Allee effects

dataset used for the chapter Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group... more

Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifetime reproductive success

dataset from chapter 5: Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifeti... more

Multilayer social networks reveal the social complexity of a cooperatively breeding bird

iScience, Nov 1, 2021

Summary The social environment of individuals affects various evolutionary and ecological process... more Summary 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.

Task‐Dependent Differences in Learning by Subordinate and Dominant Wild Arabian Babblers

Ethology, Mar 11, 2016

Learning and innovation abilities have been studied extensively in flocking birds, but their impo... more Learning and innovation abilities have been studied extensively in flocking birds, but their importance and relevance in cooperatively breeding birds have been relatively unexplored. We studied the acquisition of novel foraging skills in 14 groups of wild, cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers (Turdoides squamiceps). While in a previous study we found that subordinate individuals were usually the first to learn to remove black rubber lids from a foraging grid, here we show that dominant individuals were the first to succeed in shifting from these black rubber lids to newly introduced white rubber lids. We also found that in all groups where one forager learned to shift to the white lids, the rest of the foragers also learned to do so, suggesting that this behaviour may be transmitted among group members. Although dominant individuals were almost always the first to remove white lids, once starting to remove white lids, dominants and subordinates learned equally well to prefer white over black lids based on differential reinforcement (food was provided only under white lids). Together with our previous study, our results suggest that differences in learning between dominants and subordinates may be task-specific, which may represent different cognitive strategies: subordinates may explore a more diverse range of foraging opportunities, while dominants may be better at generalizing from familiar tasks to similar ones.

Component, group and demographic Allee effects in a cooperatively breeding bird species, the Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps)

Oecologia, May 23, 2016

This study is a result of a unique data analysis, covering more than 35 years of comprehensive, l... more This study is a result of a unique data analysis, covering more than 35 years of comprehensive, long term data collected on the cooperatively breeding Arabian babbler. This study joins recent papers on cooperatively breeding species in describing component and group Allee effects, but furthermore, it is the first to discover a demographic Allee effect in any cooperatively breeding species. We believe that these findings will provide a major contribution to an overall understanding of the factors influencing population dynamics in cooperative breeders Declaration of authorship Author Contributions: OK designed the analysis and analyzed the data with the supervision

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Tolerance of wolves shapes desert canid communities in the Middle East

Global Ecology and Conservation, Aug 1, 2022

Social foraging strategies and acquisition of novel foraging skills in cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers

Behavioral Ecology, Oct 14, 2014

Social foraging strategies and their association with learning and innovation abilities have been... more Social foraging strategies and their association with learning and innovation abilities have been studied extensively in flocking birds, but their importance for cooperatively breeding birds has remained relatively unexplored. The high degree of sociality typical of cooperative societies may indicate an important role of social foraging for learning and innovation. We studied 1) social foraging strategies and 2) the acquisition of a novel foraging skill in 16 groups of wild, cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers (Turdoides squamiceps). In Experiment 1, we provided a foraging grid of 96 feeding wells to each group, allowing them either to search for food individually (producer) or to join other birds (scrounger). Subordinates scrounged significantly more than dominant individuals, spent longer on the foraging grid, and had a higher proportion of their foraging steps rewarded (due to the effect of successful scrounging). However, scrounging was not related to poor learning ability because almost all the individuals that learned the novel foraging skill in Experiment 2 (removing a rubber lid to reach food) were scroungers. These findings suggest that group members differ in their foraging strategies and learning abilities according to their rank and that subordinate group members may be more opportunistic and flexible in their behavior than dominants, making use of both scrounging and novel foraging opportunities.

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Living fast, dying young: anthropogenic habitat modification influences the fitness and life history traits of a cooperative breeder

Modification of natural habitats can lead to an ecological trap, as animals can maladaptively sel... more Modification of natural habitats can lead to an ecological trap, as animals can maladaptively select lower-quality habitats over natural landscapes. Modified habitats reduce group size and prevalence, the success of dispersing individuals, and breeding success. However, little is known about how these effects on fitness affect the sociality of cooperative breeding species, which may be particularly susceptible to habitat modification. Here we show that the selection of anthropogenically modified habitats negatively affects the fitness, which has consequences in the life history traits of a cooperative breeder.We used data collected during six years from a monitored population of Arabian babblers (Argya squamiceps) and found that groups living in modified habitats breed more than those in natural habitats but that juvenile and adult survival in modified habitats was lower. Individuals living in modified habitats acquired dominance earlier than individuals from natural habitats. Males...

Protocol to record multiple interaction types in small social groups of birds

STAR Protocols

Effect of group size and composition on individual behavior, group dynamics and population regulation in the Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps)

Thesis by publication."A dissertation submitted to Macquarie University in application for t... more Thesis by publication."A dissertation submitted to Macquarie University in application for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2014".Includes bibliographical references.1. Introduction -- 2. General methods -- 3. Social foraging strategies and acquisition of novel foraging skills in cooperatively-breeding Arabian babblers -- 4. Task-dependent differences in innovation abilities by subordinate and dominant wild Arabian babblers -- 5. Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifetime reproductive success in a cooperatively breeding bird -- 6. Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences on group dynamics in a cooperative breeder -- 7. Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group and demographic Allee effects on a cooperatively breeding bird species -- 8. General discussion -- References -- Appendices.Cooperative breeding is a social system in which individuals help care for young that are not their own. Considerable resear...

Tolerance of wolves shapes desert canid communities in the Middle East

Global Ecology and Conservation

Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group and demographic Allee effects

dataset used for the chapter Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group... more

Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences on group dynamics

All dataset from the chapter Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences o... more

Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifetime reproductive success

dataset from chapter 5: Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifeti... more

Multilayer social networks reveal the social complexity of a cooperatively breeding bird

iScience, 2021

Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation

Conservation Biology, 2020

Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodive... more

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Task‐Dependent Differences in Learning by Subordinate and Dominant Wild Arabian Babblers

Ethology, 2016

Component, group and demographic Allee effects in a cooperatively breeding bird species, the Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps)

Oecologia, 2016

Download

Living fast, dying young: anthropogenic habitat modification influences the fitness and life history traits of a cooperative breeder

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), May 14, 2023

Download

Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences on group dynamics

All dataset from the chapter Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences o... more

Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group and demographic Allee effects

dataset used for the chapter Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group... more

Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifetime reproductive success

dataset from chapter 5: Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifeti... more

Multilayer social networks reveal the social complexity of a cooperatively breeding bird

iScience, Nov 1, 2021

Task‐Dependent Differences in Learning by Subordinate and Dominant Wild Arabian Babblers

Ethology, Mar 11, 2016

Component, group and demographic Allee effects in a cooperatively breeding bird species, the Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps)

Oecologia, May 23, 2016

Download

Tolerance of wolves shapes desert canid communities in the Middle East

Global Ecology and Conservation, Aug 1, 2022

Social foraging strategies and acquisition of novel foraging skills in cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers

Behavioral Ecology, Oct 14, 2014

Download

Living fast, dying young: anthropogenic habitat modification influences the fitness and life history traits of a cooperative breeder

Protocol to record multiple interaction types in small social groups of birds

STAR Protocols

Effect of group size and composition on individual behavior, group dynamics and population regulation in the Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps)

Tolerance of wolves shapes desert canid communities in the Middle East

Global Ecology and Conservation

Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group and demographic Allee effects

dataset used for the chapter Long-term population analysis reveals the presence of group... more

Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences on group dynamics

All dataset from the chapter Long-term analysis of social and environmental influences o... more

Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifetime reproductive success

dataset from chapter 5: Causes of variation in dominance acquisition, tenure, and lifeti... more

Multilayer social networks reveal the social complexity of a cooperatively breeding bird

iScience, 2021

Recognizing animal personhood in compassionate conservation

Conservation Biology, 2020

Compassionate conservation is based on the ethical position that actions taken to protect biodive... more

Download

Task‐Dependent Differences in Learning by Subordinate and Dominant Wild Arabian Babblers

Ethology, 2016

Component, group and demographic Allee effects in a cooperatively breeding bird species, the Arabian babbler (Turdoides squamiceps)

Oecologia, 2016

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Oded Keynan

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