Science update: Canids

We’ve gotten some great questions from volunteers on species distributions. One from early in the project was, “Do the ranges of gray fox and red fox overlap?” We couldn’t answer that at the time since there is no comprehensive tracking effort for gray fox in Wisconsin. Great news: we now have enough data from Snapshot Wisconsin photos that we can start shedding light on questions like this!

So far, we’ve had 6099 photo subjects classified as canids on Zooniverse from photos taken at 484 cameras. Of these, 5832 classifications from 465 cameras had enough agreement among users that we feel confident in these classifications, while 267 classifications from 19 cameras need review by experts before a final classification is determined.

Do we find different species of canid at the same camera site? Yes we do, but some combinations are more commonly found than others. The below graph shows that coyotes are the most commonly seen canid in Snapshot Wisconsin photos, and most cameras capturing canids have so far only captured coyotes. The most commonly seen multi-species mixes are coyote and fox. We’ve captured relatively few photos of wolves so far, but most cameras that have captured photos of wolves have also captured coyotes and/or fox. (Note that cameras in the elk areas are not included in this graph, since those cameras are more clustered than our other cameras and are not representative of the state.) Click on the graph to view a larger version.

The below map shows the canid data summarized by county. Data from the elk areas are included here and seen in the three small, square polygons. Note that since we do not have cameras in all parts of the state, and since different cameras have been active for different amounts of time, a lack of sightings in an area does not mean that a species is absent there – just that we haven’t seen it on our cameras (yet)! For example, we know from other data sources that wolves occur in more northern counties than what we’ve found on Snapshot Wisconsin cameras so far.

What we can say about these data so far:

• • Coyote, gray fox, and red fox are found across the state.
  • Photos of gray fox and red fox are sometimes captured on the same camera, and their ranges appear to have considerable overlap.
  • Wolves are very infrequently detected compared to the other canid species.

As always, as we continue to expand the Snapshot Wisconsin program, we’ll be able to fill in more of the spaces in the map!