City coyotes' poor diets could make them more aggressive, study suggests

AUGUST 8, 2019

by Bev Betkowski, University of Alberta

City coyotes' garbage-based diets are affecting their gut bacteria and that could affect how they interact with humans, new University of Alberta research shows.

"It could possibly promote aggressive behavior," said Scott Sugden, who conducted the research to earn his master's degree in science.

In analyzing the gut microbiome of 76 urban and suburban coyotes, Sugden found urban coyotes were surviving on a protein-poor diet that lacked game native to their natural diets, like rodents and deer.

Stomach contents revealed scrounged meals that included leather gloves, a still-wrapped burrito, fast food wrappers, even a chunk of pineapple.

"There's not much nutrition there for a carnivore," said Sugden.

Alongside this change in diet,the microbiome of the coyotes contained less of one specific bacterial group, Fusobacterium. Lower abundances of these bacteria have been loosely associated with aggression in dogs, so the same possibility exists for their wild canine relatives, he said.

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The recent spread of coyotes across North America did not doom deer populations

Date:  March 20, 2019

Source:  North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Coyotes eat deer, but not enough to limit the deer population at a large scale. A new study of deer numbers across the eastern United States has found that the arrival and establishment of coyote predators has not caused the number of deer harvested by hunters to decline.

"With wolves and cougars extinct in most of the eastern U.S., white-tailed deer have become abundant, sometimes overabundant," says Roland Kays, wildlife biologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University, and co-author of a paper describing this research. "Coyotes moved in as the new top predator of the east, but they aren't nearly as effective deer hunters as wolves, so there's been a lot of controversy about whether these medium-sized predators can really limit deer populations at large scales."

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When coyote parents get used to humans, their offspring become bolder, too

Date: March 11, 2019

Source:  University of Washington

Across North America, coyotes are moving into urban environments, and regardless of how they feel about it, urban residents are having to get used to some new animal neighbors. A big question for wildlife researchers is how coyotes habituate to humans, which can potentially lead to conflict.

A study led by a University of Washington Tacoma faculty member, recently published in Ecology and Evolution, suggests coyotes can habituate to humans quickly and that habituated parents pass this fearlessness on to their offspring.

"Even if it's only 0.001 percent of the time, when a coyote threatens or attacks a person or a pet, it's national news, and wildlife management gets called in," said first author Christopher Schell, an assistant professor at UW Tacoma. "We want to understand the mechanisms that contribute to habituation and fearlessness, to prevent these situations from occurring."

The study, done as part of Schell's doctoral work at the University of Chicago, focused on eight coyote families at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Predator Research Facility in Millville, Utah. The research center was founded in the 1970s to reduce coyote attacks on sheep and other livestock.

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How coyotes conquered the continent

Date: May 22, 2018

Source: North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Coyotes now live across North America, from Alaska to Panama, California to Maine. But where they came from, and when, has been debated for decades. Using museum specimens and fossil records, researchers from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University have produced a comprehensive (and unprecedented) range history of the expanding species that can help reveal the ecology of predation as well as evolution through hybridization. Their findings appeared in ZooKeysin May.

The geographic distribution of coyotes has dramatically expanded since 1900, spreading across much of North America in a period when most other mammal species have been declining. Although this unprecedented expansion has been well documented at the state/provincial scale, the continent-wide picture of coyote spread was coarse and largely anecdotal. A more thorough compilation of available records was needed. "We began by mapping the original range of coyotes using archeological and fossil records," says co-author Dr. Roland Kays, Head of the Museum's Biodiversity Lab and Research Associate Professor in NC State's Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. "We then plotted their range expansion across North America from 1900 to 2016 using museum specimens, peer-reviewed reports, and game department records." In all, Kays and lead author James Hody reviewed more than 12,500 records covering the past 10,000 years for this study.

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Red and eastern wolves are probably not recent hybrids

Date: June 7, 2017

Source: University of Idaho

A team led by University of Idaho researchers is calling into question a widely publicized 2016 study that concluded eastern and red wolves are not distinct species, but rather recent hybrids of gray wolves and coyotes. In a comment paper that will publish Wednesday, June 7, in the journal Science Advances, the team examines the previous study and argues that its genomic data and analyses do not definitively prove recent hybridization -- but rather provide support for the genetic and evolutionary distinctiveness of red and eastern wolves.

"The history of these species is complex and certainly contains evidence for hybridization in the past. The question is timing," said Paul Hohenlohe, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the UI College of Science and the lead author of the comment paper. "The data and analyses aren't actually a good test of recent vs. older hybridization. In fact, the data are consistent with red and eastern wolves having a long evolutionary history as distinct lineages."

Hohenlohe co-authored the paper with an interdisciplinary team that included co-lead author Linda Rutledge, a research associate in the biology department at Trent University in Ontario, Canada; Lisette Waits, a Distinguished Professor in UI's College of Natural Resources Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences; UI research scientist Jennifer Adams; UI postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Andrews; and other researchers from Trent, the University of Georgia and Northland College.

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Big-game jitters: Coyotes no match for wolves' hunting prowess

Eastern coyote lacks the chops to replace wolves in the ecosystem

Date: March 23, 2017

Source: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

It may have replaced the dwindling eastern wolf atop many food chains, but the eastern coyote lacks the chops to become the big-game hunter of an ecosystem, new research led by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln ecologist shows.

Eastern wolves once roamed forests along the Atlantic coast, preying on moose, white-tailed deer and other hoofed mammals collectively known as ungulates. As the wolf population plummeted via the rifle and the trap, however, the eastern coyote inherited the status of apex predator in those habitats.

But a study from John Benson and colleagues provides evidence that the eastern coyote hunts moose and other large prey far less frequently than does the eastern wolf -- instead preferring to attack smaller game or scavenge human leftovers.

The findings help resolve long-standing questions about whether eastern coyotes have filled the ecological niche left vacant when the eastern wolf became threatened, Benson said.

"Wolves rely on large prey to survive," said Benson, assistant professor of vertebrate ecology who conducted the research as a doctoral student at Trent University. "But the smaller size of coyotes appears to give them dietary flexibility to survive on a wider variety of food and prey sizes, making them less predictable predators of large prey.

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Two coyote attacks on young children prompt California to warn residents

Two children were injured by coyotes that entered homes on 5 July – unusual behavior for the animals, which tend to be fearful of humans

Alan Yuhas in New York

Friday 10 July 2015 18.26 BSTLast modified on Friday 10 July 201519.03 BST

Two coyote attacks on young children within 24 hours have prompted California to warn residents about the animals.

In two separate incidents on 5 July, two children were injured by coyotes that entered their families’ homes, state wildlife officials said. A coyote that entered a family garage in the Irvine area injured a two-year-old boy on his neck and cheek. A second animal entered another family’s home and scratched a seven-year-old girl on the back of her heel.

The encounters were the third and fourth in three months: in May a coyote bit a three-year-old girl on the neck in a park, and in June another bit a two-year-old boy at a playground.

“We’re just asking residents to be vigilant when they’re outside with their small children and pets,” said state wildlife department spokeswoman Janice Mackey.

In six weeks, eight coyotes have been “taken” – wildlife officials’ preferred euphemism for capture and euthanasia. Mackey said some were taken on the basis of “the way they were acting when people were around” and others were “in deep residential areas”.

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Ancient Coyotes Had Larger Jaws, Sharper Teeth

by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | December 31, 2014 02:00pm ET

Ancient coyotes hunted large prey, and had larger jaws and sharper teeth to bring down their choice meals than modern-day coyotes do, a new study reports.

The fierce coyotes of the past (Canis latrans) likely ate the young of large animals that roamed North America during the Pleistocene epoch, including juvenile llamas, camels and horses. But climate change and, to a small extent, human hunters, likely killed off these large animals as the Pleistocene ended about 11,500 years ago.

As the average size of its prey shrank, so did the coyote's jaws, said the study's lead author, Julie Meachen, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at Des Moines University in Iowa.

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Coyote predation on deer in Eastern U.S. manageable, research suggests

Date:

May 9, 2014

Source:

Penn State

Summary:

Coyotes are a major predator of white-tailed deer across the East, especially fawns born each spring, but wildlife managers nonetheless are able to stabilize and even grow deer herds, according to researchers. Coyotes -- Canis latrans -- are a relatively recent arrival to eastern North America, appearing first in the region in noticeable numbers in the 1970s. They are a significant source of deer mortality and most often prey on whitetails in the earliest months of their lives. Coyotes have long inhabited the American West.

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Controversial Idaho hunting contest ends with no wolves killed

By Laura Zuckerman

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - A controversial hunting contest in Idaho targeting wolves and coyotes has ended with nearly two dozen coyotes killed but no wolves shot, though rancor over the event remains undiminished.

The coyote and wolf derby was promoted by ranchers and hunting enthusiasts as a form of family recreation aimed at reducing the number of predators threatening livestock and big-game animals like elk prized by hunters. It was condemned by conservationists as cruel and unsportsmanlike.

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Red wolves endangered by rule designed to protect them - 7th wolf killed

Seventh Red wolf shot dead - Rule change threatens Red wolves with extinction


December 2012. Yet another Red wold has been shot in North Carolina; at least 7 have been killed since a rule change in the law to allow hunting of coyotes at night. This radio-collared red wolf was found dead with a suspected gunshot wound on November 29, 2012, south of Columbia, in Tyrrell County, N.C.

16 Red wolves have died in 2012
A total of 16 red wolves have died since January 1, 2012. Of those 16, two were struck and killed by vehicles, two died during capture (Two small pups were killed by a parent after the pups had a microchip fitted under their skin), five died of unknown causes, and seven were suspected gunshot deaths.

World's most endangered canid?
The red wolf is one of the world's most endangered wild canids. Once common throughout the south-eastern United States, red wolf populations were decimated by the 1960's due to intensive predator control programs and loss of habitat. A remnant population of red wolves was found along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. After being declared an endangered species in 1967, efforts were initiated to locate and capture as many wild red wolves as possible. Of the 17 remaining wolves captured by biologists, 14 became the founders of a successful captive breeding program.

Read on: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/shoot-red-wolf.html