In the southeastern US, coyotes are blamed for a lot of wildlife management problems, ranging from eating wild turkey nestlings to limited white-tailed deer populations. So Clemson graduate student Alex Jensen set out to ask how different coyotes in the southeast are from coyotes across their range.
In a new paper published in the international peer-reviewed journal Mammal Review, Alex found that coyotes largely eat small mammals, vegetation, rabbits, and ungulates. They have more diverse diets in spring and where human footprint is greater.
They also have different diets across their range, eating more ungulates in temperate forests, where they coexist with wolves, and where there is snow – suggesting scavenging is important.
Collectively, Alex’s findings emphasise the need for continued local or regional studies to understand the highly variable ecological effects of coyotes within the diverse ecosystems they currently inhabit and are poised to inhabit.
