The coyote population peaked around here around 20 years ago after a rapid increase. The decline has been much slower. Trapping and killing was done in some cases but most of the decline has come as their food supply diminished. Feral cats have nearly disappeared, people built better fences and don’t leave small pets vulnerable. On the plus side the skunk and deer population is down also.
There’s probably some low level of genetic change but I think it’s mostly learned behavioral changes.
ETA: the population I’m referring to is in city and suburban areas. I haven’t seen recent data but they still seem to be abundant in undeveloped areas, definitely increased from 30 years ago when coyotes or their carcasses were much rarely seen anywhere in the state.
That’s the reality. We probably could kill all of the coyotes in a given area. We’re pretty good about extincting things when we want to be. The cost is prohibitive. We don’t want a bunch of people shooting in suburbs or poisoned baits lying around.
Suburbanites have to understand that if they love nature and want nature, nature is sometimes nasty and brutal. If you want the joy of songbirds in the morning and deer grazing on your lawn and the ecosystem being in balance and all that good stuff, then sometimes Fluffy or Spot are going to pay the price and even on hopefully very rare occasion and unfortunately, little Jimmy. Rural people already get this. Urban people are going to need to learn that lesson if they want the pros of nature on their doorstep. If they don’t, then there are plenty of nasty things we can do to degrade the environment to the point coyotes don’t want to live near us.
I don’t think they have genetically changed as much as they have responded to a form of selective breeding. It actually started more than 50 years ago primarily around golf courses that bordered large fields and hills. The coyotes would make forays into surrounding communities and then leave before morning. It took about 30 or 40 years before it started becoming obvious that there was a strain of coyotes that liked city life. At about that same time a population explosion started taking place. A dozen coyotes in a city can seem like a hundred because they cover such a large range. I would guess that in Torrance here we are loosing a 1,000 or more pets a year, mostly cats and quite a few small dogs in fenced backyards. I don’t know of any dogs over 20# that have been taken but I am sure there have been.
Selective breeding works the same as natural evolution, by modifying the genetic composition of the population.
But you seem to be talking about a natural process, that wouldn’t usually be called selective breeding. It could be that some coyotes learned a new behavior that in principle any coyote could learn, finding an easy source of food near humans, and that there is no genetic change. Or it could be that the coyotes that were behaviorally predisposed by their genetics to live in this way have flourished and multiplied, implying a genetic change.
There is a distinct difference, these coyotes took about 40 years to start producing one generation after another that prefers and is more successful in the city. We have been surrounded by coyote areas for decades with only occasional forays into the city. Now they are breeding in the city and never leave the city. They have penetrated areas that are more than 20 miles from the nearest wildlife habitats that you would normally see coyotes in.
Actually, it is the opposite; human populations have extended into what were formerly natural habitats while increasing the number of small pets suitable as prey, and coyotes have adapted to forage in and around inhabited areas. Other than selecting for a somewhat less skittish natural predisposition, it doesn’t imply any “selective breeding” or other deep modification of genetic or congenital behaviors. Coyotes, like many canids, are quite adaptable in their hunting and social behaviors and scavenging the detritus of human civilization is quite a good strategy that has worked out very well for the domestic dog, likely in multiple independent instances. Coyotes rarely travel long distances and a family or pack that inhabits a suburban or urban locale isn’t likely to leave it unless driven out by threat or competition.
So far as I can discern, what you describe could be natural selection for a behavioral trait (evolution, a genetic change), or could be a learned behavioral change (no genetic basis). What do you think favors one of those hypotheses over the other?
Do you have any actual genetic evidence that there is some new “breed” of coyote? If so, this breed is popping up simultaneously in about a thousand different places. If this is really the case, there might be Nobel Prize in Biology for you once you publish your data.
There are at least eighteen different subspecies of coyote in North America. Next to the American black bear (Ursus americanus) and common raccoon (Procyon lotor) they are one of the most diverse and uniformly distributed non-rodent mammalian species in North America. They are so immensely adaptable that they have actually thrived with increasing human presence; motorists driving through Joshua Tree National Monument at twilight will find almost continuous string of double reflectors lining the road as coyotes wait for roadkill to feast upon. Observationally, they are smarter than the grey wolf, and possibly than the herding breeds of domestic dog. There is no reason to believe, absent of actual genetic evidence, that there is some significant evolution or genetic shift with these “urban coyotes” beyond possibly reducing their natural avoidance of humans, and as backcountry hikers in the Southwest know, coyotes are not all that reticent about approaching campsites if there is food to be had. They are considered tricksters by many Amerindian tribes for good reason; they are very clever animals and were so long before cities started encroaching on their natural habitats.
Maybe type rather than subspecies would better describe it. Dog breeders breed for behavioral types all the time. Why does it seem so odd that coyotes would start producing more successful types from successful parents? The evidence of this is overwhelming.
Many posters will remember these points from other coyote discussions, but:
–Coyotes are seen more frequently and in larger numbers in built-up areas of Los Angeles. That’s based on my personal experience in different areas–not newly built tracts, but areas that have been residential for decades. No good cite, as perhaps not surprisingly no one really tracks coyote numbers by neighborhood; but here’s one article suggesting they are becoming more aggressive and, as suggested upthread, “city coyotes”:
–I can’t find a cite or even speculation, but I know I read once that coyotes have moved into the vacuum created when people started keeping their dogs indoors more instead of letting them run around the neighborhood. The big dogs kept the coyotes away and incidentally kept the cats and small dogs safe.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say but coyotes have indeed moved into suburban and urban locations and growing their populations there.
Urban (and suburban) coyotes have no big competitor in their niche, no natural predator of them, and there is plenty of food around for an omnivore. On the plus side they likely help keep the rat and feral cat populations down.
This articleexplains why attempts to cull by hunting or trapping may backfire.
I do not know if any particular coyote personality traits are being selected for within urban and suburban ecosystems but locally I have experienced that the deer are now out and out aggressive with little to no fear and I experienced one charging at my dog when we were on a walk. Freaked the heck out of me. Coyotes I suspect don’t need to have personality selected for over generations but can learn and pass on successful tactics by way of culture. Still I’ve previously read that coyotes are only likely to be aggressive during mating season (roughly February).
I’d be ok being ruled by adorable & clever fuzzy overlords. You can bet your ass I’d be a house monkey, pleased as punch to be giving scritches to my masked master. I have no shame.
I should point out that around here we also have coywolves, and in fairness, a coywolf is a terrifying thing to an extent a coyote is not. They are much bigger - a coyote usually clocks in around 50 pounds, while a wolf can be quite a lot larger. I have been too close to both types of animal; coyotes are not a lot bigger than my dog, a little duck toller. A coywolf is twice that big.
I’ll tell you this; you will never mistake a coyote, wolf or coywolf for a domestic dog if you get a good look. They’re just… different. They MOVE differently. A fox acts much more like a dog, even though they are genetically much more different.
In the eastern US coyotes now are significantly mixed with wolves and/or domestic dogs (usually both, sometimes just dogs, rarely just wolves). So they are different genetically than when they most recently made their way back from the west. Not in the sense of pure natural selection within a species necessarily, but still. They are bigger, and the dog part makes them less disinclined to have contact with humans, it’s said at least.
