Drought and coyotes mediate mesopredator response to human disturbance

Mesopredators in western North America are facing major changes to their ecosystems, including drought and the expansion of human disturbance. To balance resource needs and risk-taking on the landscape, mesopredators are likely shifting their habitat use as well as their interspecies interactions. As part of a large-scale study to help evaluate responses of terrestrial wildlife to severe drought, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife surveyed mesopredator presence across 585 sites in the Mojave Desert and Central Valley ecoregions of California. This study spanned a drought year (2016) and a post-drought year (2017), providing the opportunity to investigate how drought and interspecific interactions may mediate spatial patterns of mesopredator occurrence across a continuum of human disturbance levels. We used single-season, single-species, and conditional two-species occupancy models to elucidate these relationships in both ecoregions. We examined occupancy and detection of coy...