Variation in animal abundance is shaped by scale‐dependent habitat, competition, and anthropogenic influences. Coyotes Canis latrans have dramatically increased in abundance while expanding their range over the past 100 years. Management goals typically seek to lower coyote populations to reduce their threats to humans, pets, livestock and sensitive prey. Despite their outsized ecological and social roles in the Americas, the factors affecting coyote abundance across their range remain unclear. We fit Royle–Nichols abundance models at two spatial scales in a Bayesian hierarchical framework to three years of data from 4587 camera trap sites arranged in 254 arrays across the contiguous USA to assess how habitat, large carnivores, anthropogenic development and hunting regulations affect coyote abundance. Coyote abundance was highest in southwestern USA and lowest in the northeast. Abundance responded to some factors as expected, including positive (soft mast, agriculture, grass/shrub habitat, urban–natural edge) and negative (latitude and forest cover) relationships. Colonization date had a negative relationship, suggesting coyote populations have not reached carrying capacity in recently colonized regions. Several relationships were scale‐dependent, including urban development, which was negative at local (100‐m) scales but positive at larger (5‐km) scales. Large carnivore effects were habitat‐dependent, with sometimes opposing relationships manifesting across variation in forest cover and urban development. Coyote abundance was higher where human hunting was permitted, and this relationship was strongest at local scales. These results, including a national map of coyote abundance, update ecological understanding of coyotes and can inform coyote management at local and landscape scales. These findings expand results from local studies suggesting that directly hunting coyotes does not decrease their abundance and may actually increase it. Ongoing large carnivore recoveries globally will likely affect subordinate carnivore abundance, but not in universally negative ways, and our work demonstrates how such effects can be habitat and scale dependent.

中文翻译：

---

人还是掠夺者？比较狩猎和大型食肉动物对北美顶级中食肉动物丰度的栖息地依赖性影响


动物丰度的变化受规模依赖性栖息地、竞争和人为影响的影响。在过去的 100 年里，Coyotes Canis latrans 的丰度急剧增加，同时扩大了它们的分布范围。管理目标通常寻求减少郊狼数量，以减少它们对人类、宠物、牲畜和敏感猎物的威胁。尽管它们在美洲的生态和社会作用巨大，但影响其分布范围内郊狼丰度的因素仍不清楚。我们在贝叶斯分层框架中将两个空间尺度的 Royle-Nichols 丰度模型拟合到来自美国本土 4587 个相机陷阱站点的 254 个数组中的三年数据，以评估栖息地、大型食肉动物、人为发展和狩猎法规如何影响郊狼的丰度。郊狼的丰度在美国西南部最高，在东北部最低。丰度如预期的那样对一些因素做出了反应，包括正关系（软桅杆、农业、草/灌木栖息地、城市自然边缘）和负关系（纬度和森林覆盖）关系。定殖日期呈负相关，表明郊狼种群在最近定殖的地区尚未达到承载能力。几个关系是尺度依赖性的，包括城市发展，它在局部 （100 m） 尺度上是负的，但在较大的 （5 km） 尺度上是正的。大型食肉动物效应依赖于栖息地，有时在森林覆盖和城市发展的变化中表现出相反的关系。在允许人类狩猎的地方，郊狼的数量更高，而且这种关系在局部范围内最强。 这些结果，包括郊狼丰度的全国地图，更新了对郊狼的生态理解，并可以为当地和景观尺度的郊狼管理提供信息。这些发现扩展了当地研究的结果，表明直接捕猎郊狼不会降低它们的数量，实际上可能会增加它们的数量。全球正在进行的大型食肉动物恢复可能会影响从属食肉动物的数量，但不会以普遍的负面方式，我们的工作展示了这种影响如何依赖于栖息地和规模。