The slower their reproductive cycle, the higher the risk of extinction for large grazing animals such as deer and antelope that are hunted by humans.
Story in Science Daily.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
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An interesting but not terribly surprising study. That would be one of the main reasons why coyotes have been more successfuly than wolves in the past 100-200 years (also b/c coyotes live at higher densities and have smaller home ranges making it harder to get rid of all of them and b.c they can survive on smaller prey).
That’s what I thought when I read it.
Pretty much everything done in terms of predator control has overall selected in favor of coyotes and even promoted their expansion.
That’s probably true for other small, generalist predatory species.