But at the close of the ice age, about 13,000 years ago, most of the megafauna vanished — an extinction attributed to both climate change and the appearance of efficient Stone Age hunters. With them went the largest predators, allowing the smaller grey wolves to fill the vacant niche, which put them in competition with the largest coyotes. That conflict, as well as the loss of large herbivores, caused coyotes to shrink in stature. Within 1,000 years of the Pleistocene extinctions, coyotes had reached the same size as in most present-day populations.

Now, they're going through a whole new set of changes as they adapt to the modern landscape of North America. Genetic studies show that some coyotes are even interbreeding with dogs, which could lead to a different sort of hybrid animal. Researchers are struggling to keep up with the animals and their impacts as they lope into more new regions.

“Invading a landscape emptied of wolves may trigger a whole new pathway in terms of the coyote's evolution,” says Bill Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “And the coyote's arrival will have unpredictable effects on other species in the ecosystem.”

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on May 16, 2012.

8 Comments

1. 1. outsidethebox 06:06 PM 5/17/12

   It seems almost politically incorrect to read about a successful wild animal.

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2. 2. 1oldsarg 12:54 AM 5/18/12

   I believe there is a First Nations story that when the last man on Earth finally dies there will be a coyote, just out of reach, watching him and laughing.

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3. 3. darkmoonman 05:10 PM 5/23/12

   I wait the news that NRA farmers have risen to thwart this nature-created solution to deer populations explosions (caused by NRA- & farmer-supported near-extinction of natural predators) by declaring evolving coyotes to be threats that they then hunt to near extinction.

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4. 4. bbremner 08:32 PM 5/23/12

   There have been bounties and traps for coyotes here in the Northwest for many years, Coyote hunting is a popular "sport" with very high powered, accurate, and "flat" trajectory rounds. Coyotes are fast, small, and smart. They are evidently evolving faster than the hunters as there are still a lot of them left. There used to be a market for coyote fur but with the anti-fur movements this has mostly dried up. These people were the most effective coyote preditors

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5. 5. ssm1959 09:25 PM 5/23/12

   I hope the researchers are correct about the coyote controlling deer herds. I have my doubts. Having managed a 300 acre farm in south central WIsconsin for nearly 50 years, I do not believe the arrival of coyotes had any effect on the deer population at all. Our property has been perpetually at 50-100 deer per square mile even though coyotes showed up in force 20 years ago.
   
   The only force that has had any effect has been has been human predation. Over the past 5 years using state sanctioned hunting, we have been able to reduce the herd to 10-15 deer. This is still to many but with the reduction in browsing, the native plant species have rebounded to an amazing degree.
   
   Hopefully the coyotes and wolves can keep these numbers at the current levels but as far as bringing down excessive population densities, I have my doubts.

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6. 6. Poppa beer 04:28 AM 5/31/12

   SSM why not try farming deer as we do here in New Zealand. The venison market can be very lucritave.

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7. 7. S_Babylon 07:29 PM 6/13/12

   Urban animals are probably all starting to diverge from their rural counterparts. In urban areas, their main "predator" is a vehicle and it doesn't behave properly. Urban animals should be starting to display adaptive responses. In some animals this might be showing up as truncation, and replacement of one set of behaviours for another. In others their should be the beginnings of increases in neural networks to hold their old survival and new survival behaviours.

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8. 8. vdonahue 11:55 PM 6/22/12

   There were coyotes in Arlington in the early 90's. If they weren't seen in Rock Creek Park until 2004, it's because nobody was paying attention. I used to see them in our neighborhood off Military Rd, and there was a female with pups around Marymount I observed over several years.

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