Anthropogenic activities often lead to changes in the distribution and behavior of wild species. The mere presence of humans and free‐roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) can affect wildlife communities; however, responses to these disturbances might not be ubiquitous and may vary with local conditions. We investigated European pine marten's (Martes martes) distribution on Elba Island, Italy, where the species is the only wild carnivore. In this system, pine martens act as the top predator, and human presence is mostly driven by seasonal tourism. We evaluated (1) pine marten's occurrence in relation to vegetation type and elevation and the potential effects of proximity to settlements, (2) whether pine marten's distribution was associated with the co‐occurrence of humans and domestic cats, and, if so, (3) whether these co‐occurrence patterns were associated with proximity to anthropogenic infrastructures. Additionally, we explored similarities in activity patterns between pine marten and the other two species. We collected camera‐trap data at 77 locations throughout Elba Island in February–July 2020. Using single‐season multistate occupancy models, we found evidence that pine martens' occupancy was generally high across all vegetation types and elevation, and proximity to settlements was only weakly associated with the species occurrence. Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence of an association between pine martens' distribution and the presence of either humans or free‐roaming domestic cats on Elba Island. Opposing activity patterns might have facilitated pine martens' co‐existence with humans, with pine martens being active at ground level almost exclusively during nighttime. On the contrary, cats and pine martens showed similar activity patterns, and further studies are needed to define the co‐existence mechanisms. These findings have important management implications and suggest that response to direct and indirect anthropogenic pressures can be highly context‐dependent and mediated by the availability of resources and competition mechanisms.

Maternal style can shape offspring behavioral profiles both in the early months and later in life. In nonhuman primates, mothering style can be described by three main dimensions: protectiveness, rejection, and warmth. Although many studies have been performed on this topic in Cercopithecines, we still know little about the more socially tolerant species of this subfamily. We aimed to determine the behavioral dimensions of maternal style in captive Macaca tonkeana, a species characterized by a particularly relaxed type of offspring rearing. We therefore investigated how mothering style influences offspring behavior at different developmental stages by observing the interactions of 30 offspring during the first 5 months of infant life and for 10 days when infants were 12 months old. We used principal component analysis to first extract the components from the variables describing the main interactions of mothers with infants and then the components from the variables describing the main interactions between offspring and their partners. We used linear and generalized mixed models to test the effects of maternal factors on offspring behavior. Our results showed that maternal style in Macaca tonkeana was described by two independent behavioral dimensions, which we labeled protectiveness and warmth. Maternal rejection was almost nonexistent in our captive groups. We did not find any relationship between maternal style components and infant behavior during the first 5 months of life. At 1 year of age, offspring reared by higher-warmth mothers showed greater sociability. Our findings are reminiscent of the dynamic properties of human parenting, corroborating the usefulness of comparative studies on parent–infant attachment.

The invasive house mouse Mus musculus represents a great threat to islands. Eradicating house mouse populations is thus often necessary, entailing actions that could be optimised on the basis of the species’ demography and spatial behaviour. Currently, information on these aspects is scarce on small Mediterranean islands, where house mouse management programs are rising. Using spatially explicit capture–recapture analysis, we estimated the population density, capture probability and home range size of house mice on three small islands in the Tavolara Punta Coda Cavallo Marine Protected Area (Sardinia, Italy). Capture sessions were carried out for 6 consecutive days in spring–summer 2022, totalling 984 trap days. Out of 705 total captures, we trapped 258 individuals on Isola Piana, 39 on Spalmatore di Terra and 100 on Isolotto Rosso. With mean values of approximately 160 and 130 individuals per hectare, respectively, the densities on Isola Piana and Isolotto Rosso were an order of magnitude higher than those on Spalmatore di Terra (approximately 9 ind./ha), suggesting that the latter represents a lower quality habitat. The capture probability was the lowest on Isola Piana while the estimated home range size was far smaller on Isolotto Rosso than on the other islands. The patterns we found suggest that habitat quality together with local factors, such as vegetation cover, may have determined differences in mouse population density, site-specific detectability and spatial behaviour. Our study is thus an important step towards a deeper knowledge of house mouse populations on small Mediterranean islands and it can contribute to an optimization of mice eradication, not only in such environments, but also in different biogeographical contexts.

Reintroduction of separated individuals into their social group is a major problem in the management of captive group of non-human primates. Here we report a case in captive Tonkean macaques in which a female infant was abandoned by her mother after birth, then removed, hand-reared, and reintroduced after weaning to her original group in several stages. After the initial phase of separation, a period of habituation to group members followed during which the infant was brought to the front of the group enclosure daily for two months. We then started a phased reintroduction process that lasted a year. Because the biological mother was the group member most attracted to the infant, the process began by allowing the two individuals to interact. In the next stages, we introduced the infant to the other individuals one after the other, starting with the females. Females then acted as protectors against potential male aggression. At the age of one year and two months, the introduced individual had fully integrated her original group. Two years later, she appeared to behave like the other group members. This report shows that a phased process can be used to reintroduce an infant to a macaque group containing several adult females and males.