Peter F. Rebholz Lindsay Petrillo David Edward Ausband 2024 <p><span>Human-caused mortality can be pervasive and even highly selective for individuals in groups of cooperative breeders. Many studies of cooperative breeders, however, do not address human-caused mortality. Similarly, studies focused on the effects of human-caused mortality on wildlife populations often do not consider the ecology of cooperative breeders. We searched the literature and identified 58 studies where human-caused mortality affected a group characteristic, vital rate, or population state of a cooperative breeder. Of studies reporting population growth or decline, 80% reported a link between human-caused mortality and population declines in cooperative breeders. Such studies often did not identify the mechanism behind population declines, but 28% identified concurrent declines in adult survival and another 21% reported concurrent declines in recruitment or reproduction. There was little overlap between the cooperative breeding and human-caused mortality literatures, limiting our ability to accrue knowledge. Future work would be beneficial if it (</span><i>i</i><span>) identified the vital rate(s) causing population declines, (</span><i>ii</i><span>) leveraged management actions such as lethal removal to ask questions about the ecology of group-living in cooperative breeders, and (</span><i>iii</i><span>) used insights from cooperative breeding theory to inform management actions and conservation of group-living species.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1111/brv.13133 en Wiley The effects of human-caused mortality on mammalian cooperative breeders: A synthesis article