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Abstract
Although historically absent from the eastern United States, coyotes (Canis latrans) have expanded their range across the continent and are now established throughout most of North America. Range expansion of coyotes has had notable impacts on newly colonized ecosystems, including altering prey population dynamics and increasing interference competition for resources among established predator populations. The success of coyotes can be attributed to their behavioral plasticity in diet, habitat selection, and space use. In particular, territoriality and both intra- and inter-specific competition can influence coyote resource use and partitioning, but these relationships have not been well studied in the Southeast. As a result, managers and researchers recognize the need for a more comprehensive understanding of coyote ecology, particularly space use strategies (i.e. territoriality), habitat selection, and prey selection in recently colonized regions to elucidate how coyotes move through landscapes and impact established predator and prey populations. To address this, I assessed fine scale movement ecology, resource selection, and prey selection of coyotes in the Southeastern U.S., and investigated habitat and prey resource partitioning among coyotes and established native canid populations. I found that both territoriality and interspecific competition influence coyote movement and prey selection. Importantly, individual variation among coyotes was noteworthy throughout all datasets used in this work, emphasizing the substantive behavioral variation among individuals. I believe that both territoriality and potential competition should be considered to effectively elucidate behavioral patterns in future coyote ecology research.