For a couple of seconds I thought some drunk teenagers were returning home then I thought it might be coyotes. Considering that the farm dogs kept barking for what felt like an hour after I first hear the noise, it was probably coyotes,
Ecology. 2014 May;95(5):1153-61.
Climatic amplification of the numerical response of a predator population to its prey.
Abstract
We
evaluated evidence of an effect of climate on the numerical response of
a coyote (Canis latrans) population to their keystone prey, snowshoe
hares (Lepus americanus), in a Canadian boreal forest. Six a priori
hypotheses of the coyote numerical response were developed that
postulated linear, nonlinear, additive, and interactive effects of prey
and climate. Model selection procedures showed the North Atlantic
Oscillation (NAO) had the strongest effect on the coyote numerical
response via its interaction with snowshoe hare density, while other
large-scale climate indices had very weak effects. For a given snowshoe
hare density, a negative value of the NAO amplified the abundance of
coyote and a positive NAO decreased coyote abundance. We hypothesize
that the coyote numerical response is ultimately determined by the
coyote functional response influenced by winter conditions determined by
the NAO.
