Learning about coyotes in San Francisco from their scat

Read about research from Citizen Science in Conservation Fellow, Tali Caspi.

In recent decades, humans and animals have increasingly co-occurred in high densities in urban areas. Although declines in biodiversity are associated with urbanization, numerous species have adjusted to and thrive in cities. The success of urban animals is largely attributed to the expansion of their diet to include human-provided food, resulting in frequent conflicts with people. These conflicts have wide-ranging financial, health, and ecosystem-level consequences, necessitating a deeper understanding of organismal adaptation to human resources. Although past research has explored the population-level diet of species in cities, individual differences, mediating mechanisms, and biological consequences are seldom addressed. This presents a novel opportunity to integrate animal behavior, urban ecology, and participatory science methods to assess how the built environment shapes the diet of urban animals.

My research explores the impacts of urbanization on wildlife with a population of urban coyotes present in San Francisco. Through a combination of noninvasive biological sampling, wet lab work, and community science, I am investigating how coyote diet varies across the urban landscape. Specifically, alongside several community scientists–including a naturalist, photographer, dog-walker, and archaeologist–I collected coyote scats throughout the city. I then investigated coyote diet with DNA metabarcoding, a molecular technique that identifies prey DNA in a predator’s scat, yielding a high-resolution portrait of diet. To aid in scat collection, I developed a community science program for training participants in animal tracking and familiarizing them with iNaturalist, where collections and associated metadata are logged.

Although the final results are not yet published (soon!), I’ve focused on opportunities to communicate my research findings to the broader public. Perhaps the most fun was my involvement with a new nature documentary series by PBS called Human Footprint, which aired this past summer. A feature on coyotes in San Francisco can be watched in Episode 5: “The Urban Jungle”. More recently, SFGate published an article on the SF coyote diet study, discussing the methods and results-to-date in more detail. Finally, I’ve been contributing to the development of an urban ecology section of the California Academy of Sciences’ newest exhibit California: State of Nature, which opens to the public on May 24th. For those interested in learning more about my research and getting a little sneak peak of the new exhibit, I’ll be giving a talk at NightLife: California Native on Thursday May 23rd (21+).