10.5061/DRYAD.866T1G1T0
Jensen, Alex
0000-0003-0340-7765
Clemson University
Marneweck, Courtney
Clemson University
Kilgo, John
Agricultural Research Service
Jachowski, David
Clemson University
Data from: Coyote diet in North America: geographic and ecological
patterns during range expansion
Dryad
dataset
2022
coyote (Canis latrans)
carnivore diet
meta-analysis
dietary diversity
North America
range expansion
FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
South Carolina Department of Natural Resources
https://ror.org/043cdzb63
235-2012805
2022-05-19T00:00:00Z
2022-05-19T00:00:00Z
en
249810 bytes
3
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
This dataset was used to review and analyze coyote diets across North
America in "Coyote diets in North America: geographic and ecological
patterns during range expansion" by Jensen et al. in Mammal Review.
We only include data from studies that reported data as percent frequency
of occurrence and from multiple seasons. We ultimately used 93 of the
included studies (294 seasonal records) in our analyses.
Literature search In April 2020, we searched Web of Science, Google
Scholar, and ProQuest for literature on coyote diets (Appendices S1 and
S2). We also searched Google Scholar and ProQuest in Spanish and French
(this was not possible on Web of Science), because the coyote’s range
extends into Central America and Canada and studies may have been
published in those languages (Appendix S2). These searches resulted in ≥
2066 potentially appropriate results (see Appendix S1 for why ‘≥’). We
scanned titles and abstracts for evidence of quantified coyote diet
results and downloaded 221 publications for further review. We also used a
‘snowball’ approach to identify additional articles missed during our
above searches, wherein we reviewed the literature cited sections of the
first 100 of the 221 screened studies (sorted alphabetically). We stopped
at 100 because our rate of new article discovery had slowed dramatically
by articles 80-100. This snowball search resulted in an additional 29
studies. In total we downloaded 250 studies subject to additional
screening through eight criteria designed to standardise our analyses
(Appendix S3): Samples were scat and not intestinal tracts. Dietary data
were assessed using morphometric methods and recorded as the percentage
frequency of occurrence (%FO; the number of scat samples found to contain
a given prey category divided by the total number of samples). Note that
%FO can be > 100% because each scat can contain more than one prey
category. Dietary data were reported by season (i.e., not just an annual
average). Seasonal sample sizes were ≥20. If sample sizes for each season
were not reported, then the total sample size divided by number of seasons
was ≥50. Samples were unique (i.e., we generally used the peer reviewed
article if the same results were published in a thesis or dissertation).
Authors reported all contents in samples (i.e., we excluded studies that
were not comprehensive in their description of diet and only focused on
certain food categories). At least four of the six most-consumed food
categories (ungulates, lagomorphs, small mammals, vegetation, birds, and
invertebrates) were reported. Data collection We retained 93 studies after
implementing our criteria for inclusion, which contained 294 seasonal
records. For each study, we recorded the location, the sample size for
each season, and the median year it occurred. We recorded the latitude and
longitude when provided, but often had to estimate the coordinates by
visually selecting a centroid using figures provided by the authors or
searching for the study site on Google Maps. Some studies reported data
from multiple study sites, in which case we recorded information from each
study site separately. We recorded which seasons were reported and, unless
specified by the authors, classified spring as March – May, summer as June
– August, autumn as September – November and winter as December –
February. Some studies only reported a wet and dry season, which we
entered as either summer or winter depending on which climate the study
took place in (e.g., southern México’s wet season is in summer, while
California’s wet season is in winter). We recorded %FO of 12 food
categories: 1) small mammals (e.g., small rodents); 2) lagomorphs; 3) wild
ungulates (hereafter ‘ungulates’; 4) wild pigs Sus scrofa; 5) livestock
(including poultry); 6) carnivora (including opossums Didelphis
virginiana, domestic cats Felis catus, and domestic dogs); 7) birds; 8)
reptiles and amphibians (hereafter, ‘reptiles’ because amphibians were
very rarely reported); 9) invertebrates (e.g., Arthropoda); 10) vegetation
(e.g.., fruit); 11) anthropogenic foods; and 12) other foods (e.g.,
beavers Castor canadensis and fish). For most prey categories we summed
%FO values for different species within a single category. However, small
prey item values are potentially artificially inflated when using %FO
because multiple species can be in a single sample (Reynolds &
Aebischer 1991). Therefore, for small mammals, vegetation, and
invertebrates we recorded the largest %FO value for a species in those
categories (Doherty et al. 2018). For studies that reported grass or pine
needles as the highest vegetation %FO (n=5), we chose the next highest %FO
value to represent vegetation for that dataset because these items are
sometimes inadvertently collected with scat samples. Each of the 12 food
categories except wild pigs received a value for each season in a study
(i.e., we entered a zero if the category was not reported; Lange et al.
2021). We chose this approach because we assumed that, unless we had
reason to believe otherwise (and had excluded the study; see criteria
seven and eight above), authors reported coyote diets comprehensively. For
wild pigs, we only included studies that reported them (n = 48), given
that their range was and is limited to the southern USA and parts of
California (Bevins et al. 2014), and so they did not co-occur with coyotes
in most of the studies. Therefore, our summary statistics for wild pigs
represent their consumption by coyotes where the two species co-occur.
There is a metadata sheet (README) which explains each column in the data.