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Published VersionCC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Impacts of coyote colonization on coastal mammalian predators
Scientific Reports, Vol.14, pp.1-13
2024
Abstract
Extreme ecosystem modification by humans has caused drastic reductions in populations and ranges of top mammalian predators, while simultaneously allowing synanthropic mesopredator species to expand. These conditions often result in inflated local densities of highly adaptable mesopredators that disrupt trophic dynamics and place unsustainable predation pressure on native prey populations. Colonization of a dominant predator may lead to top-down control of mesopredators and restore trophic balance. Coyotes are a novel colonizer of some coastal barrier islands of eastern North America, offering an opportunity to test how the addition of an apex predator impacts an established guild of mesopredators. To assess their trophic impact, we conducted 75,576 camera trapping hours over an 18-month study period, capturing > 1.5 million images across 108 coastal camera sites. Using two-species occupancy and habitat use models, we found sizeable effects of coyote habitat use on that of red foxes and free-ranging domestic cats, suggesting that coyotes function as apex predators in barrier island ecosystems. In fact, the only factor that determined the spatial pattern of highly ubiquitous red foxes was the sympatric habitat use of the largest carnivore in the food web—coyotes. That ‘novel’ apex predators can become established in coastal food webs illustrates the highly dynamic nature of conservation challenges for habitats and species at the edge of the sea.
Details
- Title
- Impacts of coyote colonization on coastal mammalian predators
- Authors
- Christian H. Crosby (Corresponding Author) - Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyThomas A. Schlacher - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringKathleen Kerwin - Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyBrooke Maslo - Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
- Publication details
- Scientific Reports, Vol.14, pp.1-13
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2024
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-024-68698-9
- ISSN
- 2045-2322
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- Data are available from the corresponding author, Christian Crosby, by request.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991054271202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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