Baseline diet of an urban carnivore on an expanding range front

Abstract

For the past 200 years, coyotes have steadily expanded their range eastward from the Midwestern USA. They have successfully colonized the contiguous landscape east of the Mississippi River and have been documented on Long Island, New York since 2009 with successful breeding confirmed in 2016. Occupying a diverse array of habitat types along the way, they are now commonplace in many urban and suburban landscapes as well. Using 149 scats and 13 stomachs collected from 2009 to 2017 and analyzed by traditional scat analysis methods, we described the diet of coyotes found in the New York City. The most common prey items, as a percentage of scats, were rodents (35.2%), birds (27.7%), followed by anthropogenic items (26.4%). These results were similar when compared to that of seven other urban centers in North America.