Predator naivety negatively affects reintroduction success and this threat is exacerbated when prey encounters predators with which they have had no evolutionary experience. While methods have been developed to inculcate fear into such predator-naïve individuals, none have been uniformly successful. Exposing ontogenetically- and evolutionary-naïve individuals firstly to native predators may be an effective stepping stone to improved responses to evolutionarily novel predators. We focused on greater bilbies (Macrotis lagotis) and capitalised on a multi-year mammalian recovery experiment whereby western quolls (Dasyurus geoffroii) were reintroduced into parts of a large fenced reserve that contained a population of naïve bilbies. We quantified a suite of antipredator behaviours and measures of general wariness across quoll-exposed and quoll-naive bilby populations. We then translocated both quoll-exposed and quoll-naïve individuals into a large enclosure that contained feral cats (Felis catus) and monitored several behaviours. We found that bilbies can respond appropriately to quolls but found only limited support that experience with quolls better prepared bilbies to respond to cats. Both populations of bilbies rapidly modified their behaviour in a similar manner following their reintroduction to a novel environment. These results may have emerged due to insufficient prior exposure to quolls, inappropriate behavioural tests or insufficient predation risk during cat exposure. Alternatively, quolls and cats are only distantly related and may not share sufficient similarities in their predatory cues or behaviour to support such a learning transfer. Testing this stepping stone hypothesis with more closely-related predator species and under higher predation risk would be informative.

Fire drives animal population dynamics across many ecosystems. Yet, we still lack an understanding of how most species recover from fire and the effects of fire severity and patchiness on recovery processes. This information is crucial for fire-mediated biodiversity conservation, particularly as fire regimes change globally. We conducted an experiment to test whether post-fire recovery is driven by in situ survival or recolonisation, and to determine whether this varies with fires of increasing percentage area burnt (burn cover) and severity. We used the pale field rat (Rattus tunneyi) as a model, because it represents the extinction process for a suite of mammal species suffering population collapse across Australia’s northern savannas. Our treatments spanned a gradient from patchy, low severity fires (simulating early-dry season management burns) to thorough, high severity fires (simulating wildfires). We performed capture-mark-recapture, vegetation and aerial surveys before, six weeks after and one year after fire. Six weeks after fire, pale field rats were only captured in unburnt patches of vegetation, and capture rates were proportional to the amount of unburnt habitat. One year later, both vegetation and pale field rat populations recovered across all sites. However, population recovery after low severity fires was likely achieved through in situ survival and reproduction in unburnt micro-refuges, compared to recolonisation driving recovery after high severity fires. Synthesis and applications. Pale field rat persistence is strongly dependent on the retention of unburnt habitat patches within fire affected areas. Management strategies that increase micro-refugia within burnt areas may facilitate pale field rat population recovery. Globally, building recovery mechanisms into fire management will be vital for supporting the long-term persistence of fire-affected species.