Prey preferences of the coyote (Canis latrans) throughout its North American distribution

The coyote Canis latrans is one of the most studied species in North America with at least 510 papers on its diet alone. While this research has yielded excellent reviews of what coyotes eat, it has been inadequate to draw deeper conclusions because no synthesis to date has considered prey availability. We accounted for prey availability by investigating the prey preferences of coyotes across the species’ distribution using the traditional Jacobs’ index method, as well as the new iterative preference averaging method on scats and biomass. We found that coyotes preferred Dall’s sheep Ovis dalli, white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus, eastern cottontail rabbits Sylvilagus floridanus and California voles Microtus californicus, which yielded a predator to preferred prey ratio of 1:2. We also found that coyotes avoided preying on other small mammals, including carnivorans and arboreal species. There was strong concordance between the traditional and iterative preference averaging method o...