COYOTE SIZE SERIAL

Increased prey capture success and decreased losses from competitors are often invoked as factors promoting group hunting. Group hunting is common among social carnivores, and mechanisms that promote this behavior are a central topic in evolutionary biology. We discuss areas of needed research and the relevance of our findings to both the conservation and ecology of predators and management of humanвЂ“wildlife conflict.

The prevalence of predators persisting without prey will almost certainly change in the future due to altered availability of anthropogenic foods, scavenging opportunities, and natural prey. Here, we synthesize research on scavenging and the use of anthropogenic resources by marine and terrestrial predators hypothesize how the use of these resources may change predator behavior with respect to their social structure, space use, life history, and individual behavioral traits and illustrate how these changes are likely to have cascading effects through ecosystems. Despite investigations into the effects of predator presence or absence on prey behavior and ecology, little research has assessed the effect of prey absence on predators. Rapid and ongoing environmental change is leading to scenarios where marine and terrestrial predators are persisting without prey, either by scavenging or using anthropogenic foods. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved). Thus, cognitive decline and flexibility may be conserved among canines pending additional studies on other Canis species. Performance did not differ between coyotes and previously tested dogs, but similar to dogs, behavioral flexibility declined with age in adult coyotes. These findings suggest that behavioral flexibility may help coyotes to detect and respond appropriately to both rapid fluctuations and gradual changes in ecological conditions. In addition, coyotes inhibited prepotent win-stay choices to acquire the color discrimination task. A total of 19 of 20 coyotes demonstrated the ability to track shifts in spatial reward contingencies and learned to rapidly complete reversals by using a win-stay, lose-shift strategy. We also performed a second experiment using a color discrimination task to test for flexible rule learning.

COYOTE SIZE SERIAL

In this study, we modified a spatial serial reversal-learning test that was sensitive to cognitive aging in pet dogs to test cognitive flexibility in captive coyotes. Aging dogs develop a form of dementia that mirrors Alzheimer's disease in humans, but it is unknown whether similar cognitive deficits develop with age in coyotes and other wild canids. Coyotes (Canis latrans) and domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) differ markedly in their social and trophic ecology but have both been highly successful in adapting to human-modified ecosystems. Aging may also impact the cognitive abilities of canids. A comparison of the present findings with the results of the other coyote studies indicates that variation in the average size of prey eaten is an important factor determining group size and structure of coyote populations.Д¬ognitive flexibility evolves in species that live in complex and dynamic social systems and habitats and may enable species to better cope with anthropogenic habitat modification.

I conclude that group foraging increases the feeding efficiency of coyotes in Jasper. Pairs and packs defended ungulate carcasses and used these clumped resources more effectively than single coyotes. Since elk were scavenged, their occurrence in the winter diet was primarily a function of the number dying within each coyote territory. In contrast, the percentage of elk in the winter diet was independent of group size. Packs were more successful than pairs or single coyotes in catching mule deer. The percentage of mule deer in the winter diet varied directly with group size. This pattern was also evident for two packs where mean group size rose from 1.5 in summer to 3.1 in winter with the incorporation of pups into the pack. In summer when rodents (43%) and neonatal cervids (19%) were the major foods, average group size in the population was 1.4 (n = 339 observations), whereas in winter when large ungulates dominated the diet (67%) average group size rose to 2.0 (n = 798). Diet was determined from analysis of 1967 feces. The foraging ecology and social organization of coyotes, Canis latrans, were studied in Jasper National Park, Alberta, from 1974 to 1977.

Coyote size