The intrepid urban coyote: a comparison of bold and exploratory behavior in coyotes from urban and rural environments
The intrepid urban coyote: a comparison of bold and exploratory behavior in coyotes from urban and rural environments
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-019-38543-5
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发表时间：
2019-02-14
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Young, Julie K.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Breck, Stewart W.;Poessel, Sharon A.;Young, Julie K.
郊狼（Canis latrans）是适应性极强的中型食肉动物，如今几乎栖息在美国和加拿大的每一座大城市。为了帮助了解郊狼是如何适应城市环境的，我们在两种截然不同的环境（即乡村和城市）中比较了两种具有生态和进化重要性的行为特征（即大胆 - 羞怯以及探索 - 回避行为）。大胆是个体对危险情况的反应，而探索是个体探索新情况的意愿。我们从两项测试中得到的结果都表明，城市郊狼比乡村郊狼更大胆且更具探索性，并且在这两个种群中，都存在在这两个维度上有所不同的个体。城市郊狼的大胆行为是在几十年间形成的，我们推测可能的过程（例如学习和选择）以及地点差异可能在这种行为适应中起作用。我们假设一个重要因素是人类对待郊狼的方式；在乡村地区，郊狼经常受到迫害，而在城市地区，郊狼很少受到迫害，并且有时因靠近人类而得到积极的奖励。这种行为适应的负面后果是郊狼变得足够大胆，偶尔会捕食宠物或攻击人类。
Coyotes (Canis latrans) are highly adaptable, medium-sized carnivores that now inhabit nearly every large city in the United States and Canada. To help understand how coyotes have adapted to living in urban environments, we compared two ecologically and evolutionarily important behavioral traits (i.e., bold-shy and exploration-avoidance behavior) in two contrasting environments (i.e., rural and urban). Boldness is an individual's reaction to a risky situation and exploration is an individual's willingness to explore novel situations. Our results from both tests indicate that urban coyotes are bolder and more exploratory than rural coyotes and that within both populations there are individuals that vary across both spectrums. Bolder behavior in urban coyotes emerged over several decades and we speculate on possible processes (e.g., learning and selection) and site differences that could be playing a role in this behavioral adaptation. We hypothesize that an important factor is how people treat coyotes; in the rural area coyotes were regularly persecuted whereas in the urban area coyotes were rarely persecuted and sometimes positively rewarded to be in close proximity of people. Negative consequences of this behavioral adaptation are coyotes that become bold enough to occasionally prey on pets or attack humans.