Coyotes display minimal response to Cougar scent at experimental carcass sites

Interactions among predators can have cascading impacts on communities and ecosystems. These interactions often occur around carrion, where the carrion provides a food reward, but also a risk of encountering other, potentially dominant, predators. Understanding how predators balance risk and reward at carrion, and how perceived risk changes in response to carcass origins and conditions, provides valuable insight into intraguild interactions. We investigated Coyote (Canis latrans) behavior at carrion simulated as cache sites treated with Cougar (Puma concolor) scent versus carrion used as control sites to better understand how Coyotes assess risk while feeding on carrion. Coyotes displayed similar behavior between sites treated and untreated with Cougar scent, suggesting that the presence of Cougar scent did not alter perceived risk by coyotes in our study. Instead, coyote behavior responded to carcass age, elevation, and whether avian scavengers had visited the carcass. Coyotes spent mo..., This data set contains information of coyote visits to simulated cougar cache sites. We collected these data using wildlife cameras deployed at cache sites which recorded videos when triggered by motion in front of the camera. We processed the videos to extract behavioral data on coyotes., , ## ReadMe

Metadata for manuscript on coyote scavenging experiment prepared by Mitchell Parsons and Julie Young.

This metadata file describes the data for a manuscript prepared by Mitchell Parsons and Julie Young investigating behavior of coyotes scavenging at simulated cougar cache sites. We deployed road killed deer as simulated cougar kills and treated half of sites with cougar scent. We observed coyote behavior using remote cameras. We then analyzed data to understand whether coyote behavior (e.g. time to discovery, time to touch, time spent vigilant), varied based on the addition of cougar scent or other environmental factors. This resource

This manuscript has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Mammalogy in April 2024.

### DATAFILES

##### SimCacheSites.csv

This file contains information for each of the 37 simulated cache sites used in this study including dates deployed, locations, and some summary information related to visits by coyotes and other scavengers. Eac...