Is the Urban Coyote a Misanthropic Synanthrope? The Case from Chicago

Abstract

Coyotes appear to be one of the few mammalian carnivores that occur in urban areas, although their true relationship with urbanization remains poorly understood. We summarize results from a long-term study of the urban ecology of coyotes in the Chicago metropolitan area to determine the degree of synanthropy for this species and discuss the subsequent management implications for human-coyote conflicts. Local population densities were slightly higher, and survival rates for pups were five times higher compared to rural populations. In contrast to demographic patterns, behavioral responses to urbanization, including home range size, avoidance of developed land cover, activity budget, and diet, were not consistent with synanthropy, even for coyotes located in the urban matrix. We discuss the management implications of the paradoxical relationship coyotes have with people and cities.

Urban predator–prey association: coyote and deer distributions in the Chicago metropolitan area

“…Peak deer activity during sunset and sunrise is consistent with other studies (Beier and McCullough 1990). Also, peak nocturnal activity for coyotes is consistent with other studies of urban coyotes (Grinder and Krausman 2001;McClennen et al 2001) including telemetry studies in Chicago metropolitan area (Gehrt et al 2011). This is another example of coyotes avoiding humans at fine temporal and spatial scales.…”

“…The coyote is one of the most studied carnivores in North America (Bekoff and Gese 2003;Gehrt and Riley 2010), including long-term investigations in the Chicago, Illinois region (Gehrt et al 2009(Gehrt et al , 2011. Coyotes, while successful in urban landscapes, generally inhabit relatively undisturbed fragments within cities, and mostly consume natural food items (Gehrt and Riley 2010).…”

Space use by resident and transient coyotes in an urban–rural landscape mosaic

“…1A and B). Although they lived in close proximity to humans, avoidance of human development and human activity, expressed through negative selection, confirmed previous research on coyotes (Riley et al 2003;Atwood et al 2004;Gehrt et al 2009;Gehrt et al 2011;Hinton et al 2015), but also on foxes (Gloor et al 2001;Marks and Bloomfield 2006) and dingoes (Newsome et al 2013). Especially during the day, coyotes used brushland-wetland and forest, all of which provide protective cover, disproportionate to the availability of these habitats.…”

“…For coyotes, human-wildlife conflicts mostly concern threatening behaviour or attacks on pets and sometimes even people Poessel et al 2013). Most incidents occur close to housing areas ), despite evidence that coyotes generally avoid areas of high human usage (Gibeau 1998;Riley et al 2003;Atwood et al 2004;Gehrt et al 2009;Gehrt et al 2011;Gese et al 2012;Magle et al 2014b). An observed shift from crepuscular to nocturnal activity of urban compared to rural coyotes also hints that there is temporal avoidance of human activity (Grinder and Krausman 2001;Riley et al 2003;Way et al 2004;Gehrt et al 2011).…”

“…Often, coyotes cross quickly through areas of high human activity to reach undeveloped patches in which they do spend more time (Atwood et al 2004;Gehrt et al 2011;Gese et al 2012). Murray et al (2015) found that coyotes infested with sarcoptic mange relied more heavily on anthropogenic food sources than animals without disease.…”