CARNIVORE OCCURRENCE ALONG AN URBAN–RURAL GRADIENT: A LANDSCAPE-LEVEL ANALYSIS

By L. Randa, J. Yunger. 2006

166 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Human development impacts the landscape by altering the size and shape of natural habitat patches, replacing natural vegetation with other types such as lawns and row crops, or introducing environmental stressors such as increased human activity and pollutants. We investigated the effects of human alterations to the landscape on the distribution of 3 mammalian carnivores (coyote [Canis latrans], raccoon [Procyon lotor], and red fox [Vulpes vulpes]) along an urban–rural gradient in northern Illinois. Distribution of each species was assessed from occurrence at scent stations placed within or along the edges of 47 sites ≥ 4 ha, representing 7 different natural or anthropogenically altered habitats. We averaged presence or absence scores across several seasonal samples over a year, and used an outlying mean index analysis to compare them to environmental variables gathered for each site, including habitat and landscape metrics presumed to reflect varying degrees of anthropogenic influence across the urban–rural gradient. Coyotes used a variety of habitats within the rural part of the gradient. Red foxes were found in forest interiors or shrubland and old fields near forests where coyotes were least detected. Both canids were detected more often in areas of lower human densities but prey abundance was not a strong determinant of their occurrence. Overall occurrence along the gradient was highest for raccoons, which were positively associated with urban areas with relatively high residential land use.

Subfields: Ecology, Small Animals

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0b41637c5dcd75c76070f4615d656b338664d43c

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Citations in the corpus

Spatial and Temporal Structure of a Mesocarnivore Guild in Midwestern North America (2015, background): “Coyotes mainly select open grasslands, brush, and fragmented for sts (Litvaitis and Shaw 1980, Chamberlain et al. 2000, Atwood et al. 2004, Randa and Yunger 2006, Kays et al. 2008).”
The ecological effects of providing resource subsidies to predators (2015, background): “Yet even when predators used a resource subsidy, they often avoided it in the presence of humans (Ciucci et al., 1997; Boydston et al., 2003; Ashenafi et al., 2005; Randa & Yunger, 2006; Gehrt et al., 2009; Valeix et al., 2012) or in disturbed habitats (Atwood et al., 2004).”
Home Range and Landscape Use of Coyotes in a Metropolitan Landscape: Conflict or Coexistence? (2009, background): “Given that some studies using track stations have indicated that coyotes have a threshold of fragmentation beyond which they are absent (Crooks 2002; Randa and Yunger 2006), we were surprised to observe coyotes maintaining home ranges in areas with limited or no natural habitat.”
Influence of landscape characteristics on carnivore diversity and abundance in Mediterranean farmland (2009, background): “These variables were selected because they likely reflect changes in agricultural land uses across the study area, and they are known to affect carnivore habitat use and movement patterns (e.g., Gehring and Swihart, 2003; Virgós et al., 2002; Rands and Yunger, 2006; Mangas et al., 2008).”