This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Emu - Austral Ornithology. Nicole E. Butler, Simon J. Watson & Richard A. Peters (2022) Life history characteristics and alarm calling in Australian arid-zone birds, Emu - Austral Ornithology, DOI: 10.1080/01584197.2022.2104735. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.