Coyotes (Canis latrans) are now ubiquitous throughout most of the eastern United States; however, little information exists on how they are able to exploit and thrive in fragmented landscapes. We investigated home ranges, movements, and scale‐dependent resource selection of coyotes along a gradient (suburban/exurban/rural) of anthropogenic disturbance. Home‐range sizes varied along a suburban‐to‐rural gradient and were inversely correlated to urbanization (R2 = 0.79, P < 0.001). Habitat composition and coyote use of 95% (home range) and 50% (core area) contours were nonrandom. Coyotes used corridor habitat extensively and avoided urban and crop‐field habitats. Forested habitat was used extensively for diurnal cover. Rural coyotes traveled greater distances at faster rates than did suburban/exurban coyotes. Diel activity patterns were similar along the gradient, suggesting that coyotes responded similarly to differing levels and types of human activity. Coyotes appeared to assess habitat quality at the landscape scale and exploited small, disjunct resource patches present in developed landscapes. We believe that the availability of foraging habitat and travel corridors is critical to movement of coyotes in areas of high human activity.

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No data exist regarding the linkage between the dispersion of critical resources and the spatial distribution of eastern coyotes (Canis latrans). From February 2000 to January 2002, we investigated landscape-level correlates of fragmentation with coyote spacing patterns and interaction in west-central Indiana to determine whether habitat fragmentation may influence spatiotemporal home-range overlap. Eleven pairs of coyotes (four male–female, four male–male, three female–female) displayed spatial overlap in portions of their home-range utilization distributions; seven pairs interacted temporally. Percent home-range overlap of space-sharing pairs averaged 55%. Area of forested habitat within the overlap zone, pair type, and mean squared difference of nearest-neighbor distances between forested patches explained substantial amounts of variation in percent home-range overlap (R2 = 0.83, P < 0.001). Extent of temporal interaction differed by pair type, as male–male pairs interacted substantially more than male–female and female–female pairs. Five (two male–male, three male–female) of seven temporally interacting pairs exhibited simultaneous attraction to the overlap zone. The complex combination of environmental pressures present in human-dominated landscapes may facilitate spatiotemporal home-range overlap in coyotes.

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