Carnivore Ecology and Urban Adaptation

Urban landscapes present a novel arena in which carnivores navigate altered habitats, human presence and novel resource distributions. Many medium and large carnivores exhibit considerable behavioural plasticity, adjusting activity patterns, space use and diet to exploit anthropogenic subsidies such as refuse and ornamental planting. These adaptations can lead to shifts in home‐range size, temporal activity and interspecific interactions, with mesocarnivores often benefiting from the absence or suppression of apex predators in urban cores. At larger scales, urban‐natural interfaces create heterogeneous mosaics that influence colonisation, dispersal and gene flow. This dynamic interplay between trophic interactions, human pressures and carnivore life histories has global significance for biodiversity conservation, human–wildlife coexistence and ecosystem functioning. Practical applications range from community‐based management strategies to urban planning that mitigates conflict while preserving ecological connectivity and supporting urban biodiversity.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have revealed that urban coyotes display increased boldness and exploratory behaviour compared with rural counterparts, suggesting rapid behavioural shifts under relaxed persecution and enhanced learning opportunities in cities. These findings highlight how individual personalities and cultural transmission can facilitate urban colonisation by carnivores. Complementary work on predator–mesopredator dynamics demonstrates that top predators exert weaker suppressive effects at the margins of their ranges, thereby allowing mesocarnivores to flourish in peripheral and human‐modified habitats. Together, these examples underscore the importance of spatial context in shaping trophic interactions and the capacity of subordinate carnivores to exploit urban and periurban environments.

Carnivore Ecology and Urban Adaptation publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in carnivore ecology and urban adaptation across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Behavioural plasticity: capacity of an organism to modify behaviour in response to environmental variation.

Anthropogenic subsidy: resource inputs or habitat features generated by human activities that benefit wildlife.

Home range: spatial area regularly traversed by an animal for feeding, mating and refuge.

Trophic cascade: indirect effects in a food web initiated by predators that cascade to lower trophic levels.

References

1. Behavioral plasticity of raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) provides new insights for urban wildlife management in metropolis Shanghai, China. Environmental Research Letters (2024).
2. The intrepid urban coyote: a comparison of bold and exploratory behavior in coyotes from urban and rural environments. Scientific Reports (2019).
3. Effects of urbanization on resource use and individual specialization in coyotes (Canis latrans) in southern California. PLOS ONE (2020).
4. People or predators? Comparing habitat‐dependent effects of hunting and large carnivores on the abundance of North America's top mesocarnivore. Ecography (2024).
5. Top predators constrain mesopredator distributions. Nature Communications (2017).