The relative importance of adaptation and individual ontogenetic experience in dogs' high levels of behavioral compatibility with humans has been a topic of intense scientific attention over the past two decades. Salomons et al. Current Biology, 31, 3137-3144, (2021) recently presented a particularly rich data set of observations on both wolf and dog puppies that has the potential to contribute substantially to this debate. In their study subjecting wolf and dog puppies to batteries of tests, including the ability to follow human pointing gestures, Salomons et al. (2021) reported that dogs, but not wolves, have a specialized innate capacity for cooperation with humans. However, upon reanalyzing this data set, we reach a different conclusion-namely, that when controlling adequately for various environmental factors, wolves and dogs perform similarly in their cooperation with humans.

This Project Report documents the accomplishments of an extraordinary group of students, faculty, and staff at the Arizona state University, who participated in a year-long, multidisciplinary, first-of-its-kind academic endeavor entitled “The Making of a COVID Lab.” The lab that is the focus of this project is the ASU Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory, known simply as the ABCTL.

Under the direction of Dr. Carolyn Compton, a group of seven Barrett honors students have embarked on a truly unique team thesis project to create a documentary on the process of creating a COVID-19 testing laboratory. This documentary tells the story of the ASU Biodesign Clinical Testing Laboratory (ABCTL), the first lab in the western United States to offer public saliva testing to identify the presence of COVID-19.

In this paper, I outline the drawbacks with the two main behavioral approaches to animal behavior problems and argue that each alone is insufficient to underpin a field of clinical animal behavior. Applied ethology offers an interest in an animal’s spontaneous behavior in natural contexts, understood within an ecological and evolutionary context, but lacks an awareness of mechanisms that can be manipulated to modify the behavior of individual animals. Behaviorism in the form of Applied Behavior Analysis offers a toolkit of techniques for modifying the behavior of individual animals, but has seldom been applied to non-human species, and often overlooks phylogenetic aspects of behavior. Notwithstanding the historical animosities between the two fields of animal behavior they are philosophically highly compatible – both being empiricist schools stemming ultimately from Darwin’s insights. Though each individually is incomplete, I argue that an integrated approach that synthesizes the strengths of each holds great promise in helping the many animals who need our assistance to survive and thrive in human-dominated environments.

Maria is a United States citizen whose parents just recently obtained legal status in the US due to Maria having turned 21. Maria has been around the undocumented population her entire life due to a large part of her family being undocumented. She became very involved with the undocumented movement back in 2010 with the passing of SB1070 in Arizona. She states that the reason she became so involved at this time was because she realized how these anti-immigrant laws were affecting her family and her community. She has worked on many campaigns at the local level such as the recall of Russell Pierce, the Adios Arpaio Campaign among other things. She is set to graduate from ASU this May 2015 with a degree in Political Science and Transborder Studies, and hopes to study law one day. She currently works with Unite Here a labor union and continues to be involved with varies campaigns some being DACA/DAPA information sessions among other things