The Ultimate Survival Resilience: Adaptation

"I don't think anyone's betting against the coyote getting to South America eventually. They have to be one of the most adaptable animals on the planet."
"Is this something we should view as a natural expansion that's a good thing, or that we should view as an invasive species that's a bad thing?"
"In some ways that's a philosophical question, because in the end, there's nothing we can do about it."
Roland Kays, ecologist, North Carolina State University

There are some species that are so specialized in what they will eat that when their food source disappears so will they. Take giant pandas, as an example; the absolute mainstay of their diet is bamboo. Monarch butterflies dine exclusively on milkweed, while koalas eat only eucalyptus, and a bird called a kite has been species-selected for dining out on snails. Should those specialized foods no longer be available those animals would soon become extinct.

Not so for other animals, which eat omnivorously, like goats as an example, and raccoons. Raccoons have adapted themselves to urban living because they long ago discovered that what people living in cities discard tastes pretty good to them and they thrive on what they can pick out of compost piles and other discarded foodstuffs in our wasteful society. And then there's the ultimate animal adapter, coyotes who have become ubiquitous on the margins and beyond, of human habitation.

They distinguish themselves as a species by breeding swiftly, eating just about whatever they find and adjust to living anywhere that they find haven for themselves, living in fields and forests, parks and even backyards (albeit somewhat discreetly) all around North America, surprising people by their sudden presence and their willingness to pick off very small family pets on occasion. They are bold and not given to bolting in a brief and sudden encounter with people.

Dr. Kays, associated with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, along with a graduate student studied reams of museum specimens, fossil records, peer-reviewed reports and wildlife agency records tracing coyotes' pathways on their migratory journeys up to ten thousand years ago. They produced maps published recently in the journal ZooKeys demonstrating that the historical range of North America's adaptable canids were previously incorrect.

The study established that coyotes lived in grasslands, prairies and deserts those thousands of years ago, headed east to the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and west as far as California in the United States until 1900 when coyote packs moved into forested habitat making their way in the early quarter of the 20th century into Alaska and many decades later, to the East Coast of the U.S. They expanded their range by mid 20th century at least twice that of any other North American carnivore since 1950.

Maybe we should leave them alone.   iStock

With the expansion of agricultural lands leading to forest fragmentation destroying the habitat of predators such as wolves, cougars and jaguars, the coyotes thrived and hybrids of coyotes and wolves or dogs (breeds like German Shepherds) were aided in adaptation by developing traits receptive to adapting to new environments. The rapidity of their expansion, however, remains a mystery; that they entered Alaska and the Northwest where intact forests host wolves and mountain lions, a conundrum.

Coyotes are now expected to keep expanding their presence. In 2010 they crossed the Panama Canal. Should they appear in South America it would rank as the first time predators have been exchanged between the continents in three million years.

Coyotes in densely populated areas (a Los Angeles suburb) can be alarming. But wildlife experts say they fill a niche in the urban ecology. (Troy Boswell / Los Angeles Animal Services)