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How animal populations adapt to human modified landscapes is central to understanding modern behavioural evolution and improving wildlife management. Coyotes (Canis latrans) have adapted to human activities and thrive in both rural and urban areas. Bolder coyotes showing reduced fear of humans and their artefacts may have an advantage in urban environments. We analysed the reactions of 636 coyotes to novel human artefacts (camera traps) at 575 sites across the state of North Carolina. Likelihood of a coyote approaching the camera increased with human housing density suggesting that urban coyotes are experiencing selection for boldness and becoming more attracted to human artefacts. This has implications for both human-wildlife conflict and theories of dog domestication. We also note physical traits in coyotes that could be the result of domestication-related selection pressures, or dog hybridization.

The extended evolutionary synthesis has called for additional perspectives in evolutionary theory beyond the gradualism through individual mutations emphasized in the modern synthesis (Laland et al., 2015;Pigliucci, 2007). Niche construction theory has gained attention since the 1990s as a mechanism of inheritance beyond culture and genetics, where researchers have proposed that modification of ecological environment inherited by the next generation is a key factor in evolution (Laland et al., 1999;Odling-Smee et al., 1996).Social niche construction has expanded the reach of these proposals to the social environment as well (Saltz et al., 2016). Punctuated equilibrium emphasizes periods of relative stability and rapid in change in species, as opposed to constant, slow change, sometimes called phyletic gradualism (Gould & Eldredge, 1993). Gene-culture coevolution presents another case of nongenetic inheritance, focused on