Coyote (Canis latrans) diet in an urban environment: variation relative to pet conflicts, housing density, and season

Abstract

Coyotes (Canis latrans Say, 1823) are highly successful in urbanized environments, but as they populate cities, conflict can occur and often manifests in the form of incidents with pets. To better understand whether coyotes view pets as prey or, alternatively, as competitors or a threat, we conducted a diet analysis of coyotes in the Denver metropolitan area (DMA) by analyzing scats. We also examined differences in diet between high-and low-density housing and among seasons. We found only small percentages of trash and domestic pets in the coyote diet. The presence of pets in the diet did not coincide with the increase of pet conflicts in the DMA in December and January, supporting the hypothesis that coyote conflict with pets is primarily driven by competition or a threat response. Coyotes relied mostly on native plant and animal species, and rodents and lagomorphs were the most prevalent diet items. Coyotes consumed rodents and non-native plants more often in high-density housing and deer, corn, and native plants more often in low-density housing. Coyotes also consumed more fruits and invertebrates during summer and autumn and more mammals and birds in winter and spring. As human-coyote conflicts increase in urban areas, understanding how coyotes and other urban-adapted carnivores use anthropogenic resources may provide insight that can be used to promote coexistence between humans and wildlife.

Effects of urbanization on resource use and individual specialization in coyotes (Canis latrans) in southern California

“…Our findings are consistent with those from other urban coyote studies that found increased consumption of anthropogenic resources with increasing proximity to urban areas [21,24,28,67,[69][70][71]. The consumption of cats by urban coyotes was high (19.8% of scats), which is similar to another southern California study [69] but higher than typically reported by other urban coyote diet studies [21,24,28,70,71]. Cats receive supplemental food from their owners or feral colony caretakers, so their densities are more influenced by human housing density than prey density [72].…”

Urbanization alters predator‐avoidance behaviours

“…Predation pressures may also be reduced due to a surplus of resources provided by anthropogenic sources (e.g., refuse, fruit trees, pet food). Coyotes are generalist predators (Morey et al., ), and urban coyotes have greater access to a variety of supplemental resources throughout the year (Morey et al., ; Murray & St. Clair, ; Newsome et al., ; Poessel, Mock, & Breck, ). A potential increase in prey items combined with the supplementation of anthropogenic food sources may reduce the overall predation rates on cottontails and deer by coyotes across the urban landscape, thus reducing the need for either species to increase their predator‐avoidance behaviour.…”

Trophic structure in a rapidly urbanizing planet

“…There is considerable evidence that feeding on anthropogenic sources can be associated with changes in feeding, sociality and aggression (Newsome, Dellinger, et al, 2015). For example, coyotes, which are prevalent in many North American cities, do not always consume anthropogenic subsidies (Murray et al, 2015;Poessel, Mock, & Breck, 2017). Studies that combine tagging with diet analysis have shown that specializing on anthropogenic subsidies occurs only in diseased (Murray et al, 2015) or transient coyotes (Newsome, Garbe, Wilson, & Gehrt, 2015).…”