ABSTRACT
Animals exhibit variation in their space and time use across an
urban-rural gradient. As the top-down influences of apex predators wane
due to human-driven declines, landscape level anthropogenic pressures
are rising. Human impacts can be analogous to apex predators in that
humans can drive increased mortality in both prey species and
carnivores, and impact communities through indirect fear effects and
food subsidies. Here, we evaluate the time use of a common mesocarnivore
across an urban rural gradient, and test whether it is influenced by the
intensity of use of a larger carnivore. Using multiple camera-trap
surveys, we compared the temporal response of a small carnivore, the
raccoon (Procyon lotor) , to the larger coyote (Canis
latrans) at four sites across Michigan that represented a gradient of
pressure from humans. We found that raccoon time use varied by site and
was most unique at the rural extreme. Raccoons consistently did not
shift their activity pattern in response to coyotes at the site with the
highest anthropogenic pressures despite considerable interannual
variation, and instead showed the stronger responses to coyotes at more
rural sites. Temporal shifts were characterized by raccoons being more
diurnal in areas of high coyote activity. We conclude that raccoons do
partition time to avoid coyotes. Our results highlight that the
variation in raccoon time use across the entirety of the urban-rural
gradient needed to be considered, as anthropogenic pressures may
dominate and obscure the dynamics of this interaction. In an
increasingly anthropocentric world, to understand species interactions,
it is imperative that we consider the entire spectrum of human pressures
that it may occur within.
Keywords: coyote, niche, partitioning, landscape of fear, Michigan,
urban