I just cut and pasted the infomation into text here for everyone:
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Wily Coyote Makes His Presence Known
(Source:
http://www.tompkinshosting.com/tompkinsw...090413.pdf)
By Karen Scott
It started several years ago, when
one of my coworkers solemnly
assured me that the Clinton administration
was secretly releasing
wolves in upstate New York. Then,
a few weeks later, one of our clients
also assured me that “we” were
working to re-establish wolves in
New York State. I laughed at the
naiveté of humans, until the coyotes
started moving into my neighborhood.
These animals were bigger, bolder
and louder than the little sprites
that used to flit through the underbrush
in Northern California.
Genetic studies done over the last
few decades confirm: Eastern
Coyotes have hybridized with
wolves and carry 10 percent wolf
DNA (
http://www.easterncoyoteresearch.com/eas...etics.html).
[See information next article]
Individual coyote sightings have
become commonplace near my
yard, but always one at a time. They
seem to leave the chickens alone.
Like the foxes, they probably prefer
our generous supply of rabbits;
most predators do not like a mouth
full of feathers. The only coyote we
ever caught chasing chickens
couldn’t get the hen before he was
chased off, and he was hit on the
road a few months later, a pathetic,
flea-bitten corpse.
Another, less reticent neighbor
was a very large, dark grey coyote
that could regularly be seen from
the road, boldly visiting a roadkill
deer carcass or hunting in a cow
pasture. This animal was very uncoyote
like, and may have been a
coydog.
What seems most unusual, however,
is the sound the pack coyotes
make when they are running
together in the undeveloped lands
that surround us. Anytime from
dusk to early morning they may
start up it sounds as if they are covering
a lot of ground together, yelping
and howling and getting the
neighborhood dogs into a frenzy.
The experts all insist that coyotes
don’t hunt in packs like wolves, but
listening to them is scary.
To find out more about our West
Hill coyotes, I called local expert
James Brown. I asked him if he had
seen any coyotes lately. “I’m looking
right at one,” he said. “She’s in
a chair in my living room.” Since
he hunts coyotes, I was taken
aback, but it turns out that “she” is
a pet coydog, rescued from a local
SPCA.
When I made my question more
specific, he confirmed that he regularly
sees the wild animals. Most
recently, there were a dozen together
in his barn trying to get into his
chicken coop, again. It is less than a
couple weeks since a neighbor of
his saw them chase down and kill a
deer. Despite what the experts say,
Brown says the coyotes are usually
together, often during the day, and
he believes they hunt together
cooperatively.
His description of their deer
hunting method is the same as
what I have seen in a dog pack that
was led by an animal that was often
suspected of being part coyote. The
pack fans out to troll for prey. If one
of them finds a deer, it starts yelping
as it chases, and the other animals
answer as they converge on
the sound of the one who has the
deer. Brown can’t say whether they
drive the deer toward each other,
but they certainly tag-team it until
it is exhausted. This would explain
the fierceness of the sound and the
ground they cover.
Other neighbors have also seen
them up here. Alan Akers used to
sit in the woods and keep notebooks
of what animals he saw, and he
believes that the influx of coyotes
has depressed the rabbit, pheasant
and turkey populations.
Brown has been hunting coyotes
for decades, and he agrees with the
official line that hunting does not
necessarily suppress population. In
packs, not every female breeds
every year. Breaking up packs so
that you have more small groups
means more pups. Coyotes also
respond to hunting pressure by producing
larger litters and breeding
younger.
Roland Kays, Curator of
Mammals at the New York State
Museum (
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/research_colle...mammalogy/),
is working on a
genetic survey of New York State
coyotes. He confirms that our coyotes
are bigger and have a greater
variety of color than Western coyotes
and they eat more deer.
However, he is frankly dubious
when I say that they are running
together, call on the move or do
more than scavenge deer. He says
that most of the animals being
studied are suburban, not rural.
Even Cornell is going to
Westchester County to do a coyote
study. According the Kays, these
coyotes are usually young, territory-
less transient animals trying to
avoid trespassing on a pack while
looking for a good territory.
Perhaps it is time that someone
saw our area as an opportunity to
study a different kind of coyote.
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Eastern Coyote Genetics
(Source:
http://www.easterncoyoteresearch.com/eas...etics.html)
October 28, 2007. BIG UPDATE: Genetic results are in and Eastern Coyotes appear to be genetically distinct; they are not western coyotes nor eastern wolves. They are a hybrid and probably should be classified as a new species.
I have been collaborating with Brad White's genetic team at Trent University and they just finished the genetic results of our eastern Massachusetts (about 75) samples. Here is what Brad has to say, "I am attaching an analysis on the genomes of your animals compared to other coyotes and eastern wolves. Essentially - green is eastern coyote, blue is western coyote and red is eastern wolf. Your animals seem mainly eastern coyote with more western coyote than some other eastern coyote populations."
[See image below] to view the [results] of our samples (labeled Jon Way) versus other regions including eastern wolves of Alongquin Provincial Park in Ontario. Brad and I will be collaborating on a manuscript together to discuss these results. We will probably target the journal Northeastern Naturalist.
Basically, Brad believes the eastern coyote should be classified as its own species. You can see that our samples match up closely with New York (including the Adirondacks) and Maine. All eastern samples have western coyote DNA in their samples (although our eastern Mass. samples have slightly more western coyote introgression). Additionally, all eastern coyote samples have eastern wolf (same species as red wolf) introgression as well. However, they all line up distinctively as eastern coyotes. I am not sure if we will be able to call the eastern coyote a new species until we sample throughout the northeast and determine where they become less "eastern coyote" and more "western coyote". However, we will certainly be able to report that the eastern coyote is indeed distinct.
I should also note that I am not a geneticist so I hope I described this accurately. Again, to view the powerpoint slide showing this, [see image below] !
Coyote Wolf Mix
